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SEtEETIONS FROM 
LIKCOLN 






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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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SELECTIONS FROM 

THE LETTERS, SPEECHES, AND 

STATE PAPERS OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 




1^ 



Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 



IDA M. TARBELL 




GINN AND COMPANY 

boston • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 







Cy, 



COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY 
IDA M. TAR BELL 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
911.6 



GINN AND COMPANY- PRO- 
PRIETORS -BOSTON - U.S.A. 



N 



i^ 



PREFACE 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



(v 



This little book is founded on the compiler's conviction that 
the most practical and inspiring guide our history offers for de- 
veloping genuinely democratic Americans is the life of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. Coupled with this conviction is a second equally 
strong, that the best place to study Lincoln is in his own writings. 

The selections here given have been chosen with three dif- 
ferent but closely related ideas in mind : 

1. Abraham Lincoln's understanding of democracy, and the way 
he worked it out in his own life, in his relations with his fellows and 
with the American people. 

2. His intellectual and moral development, particularly as we see 
it in his handling of the slavery question. 

3. His English prose and the method by which it was perfected. 

The selections should be read with the facts of his life in 
mind. The pupil should be helped to put himself in Lincoln's 
place by such concrete questions as : 

1 . How old was Lincoln at this time ? 

2. In what town was he living? 

3. How was he earning his living.? 

4. Who were his friends 1 What was his family 1 

5. What books was he reading? 

6. What was his political party and what was its platform ? 

7. Was he seeking an office, and if so, what was it? Who was his 
opponent ? 

These questions well answered will help the pupil to see Lin- 
coln much as he sees other men. Biographies which will be use- 
ful are : "A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln," by John George 

iii 



iv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Nicolay ; '' The Life of Abraham Lincoln," by J. G. Holland ; 
" Abraham Lincoln, A Biography for Young People," by Noah 
Brooks ; '' Abraham Lincoln, the Man of the People," by Nor- 
man Hapgood ; " Abraham Lincoln," by John Torrey Morse, Jr. ; 
" The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln," by Francis F. 
Browne, and the compiler's " Life of Abraham Lincoln." 

Materials 

The selections are arranged chronologically. They begin with 
extracts from the first public address, written when Lincoln was 
twenty-three years old, and end with his last public words spoken 
in Washington three days before his assassination. They consist 
of letters to friends and to political allies and opponents, of public 
''"papers, of addresses on a great variety of occasions, and of ex- 
tracts from the debates and speeches in which he expounded 
'his ideas on slavery. If fuller material is wished, or a complete 
copy of a document from which only a fragment is here quoted, 
the best source in which to seek it is Nicolay and Hay's " Com- 
plete Works of Abraham Lincoln." 

In reading, it should be remembered that the ideas which 
have controlled the selections run through practically all of 
them and are not illustrated simply by a few extracts, 

Lincoln's Ideas of Democracy 

It is important that Lincoln's ideas of democracy be disen- 
tangled from theory and oratory in the pupil's mind and be 
presented clearly as a series of practical rules of life, as they 
certainly were to their author. 

I. Let the pupil work out, from the selections and with what 
help he cati get from biographies, Lincoln's 710 1 ions of what a ma7t 
should be in a de7nocracy . 

I. Self-Respecting. Study his relations to other men to show 
this: to his law partner Herndon ; to Stephen H. Douglas; to 
William H. Seward; to his generals. 



PREFACE V 

2. Self-Reliant. At critical points in his career Lincoln always fol- 
lowed his own conclusion as to what was wise. Illustrate this by his 
choice of studies, political poHcies, and choice of men for his adminis- 
tration and for the army. 

3. Self-Developing. Trace his struggles for education. 

4. Holding Public Good above Self-interest. How he took his de- 
feat in 1858, sacrificing his ambition to be a United States senator in 
order to make the issue clear to the people. How he offered to resign 
from the presidency if it would help the situation. How he insisted 
in 1864 on making a draft of men needed for the war, although the 
action threatened to defeat his reelection to the presidency. 

II. What ivas Lincoln'' s idea of the 7'elation of one man to 
another in a democracy ? 

This theme can be studied best by taking up Lincoln's treatment 
of certain persons with whom he was thrown into close relationship. 

1. His Stepbrother. See letters of advice to him. 

2. Stephen H. Douglas. See Lincoln's treatment of him in the 
debates of 1858. 

3. General George B. McClellan. 

4. Horace Greeley. 

III. What was Lincoln'' s idea of a public mail's relation to the 
people in a dejnoc?'acy ? 

1. Did he believe the people capable of thinking out public ques- 
tions and coming to their own conclusions, or did he believe they fol- 
lowed the views of the leader of their political party .f* 

2. What did Lincoln mean by " fooling " the people.? 

3. What did Lincoln believe to be the right and true way to lead 
the people ? 

Ample material for answering and illustrating these questions 
is contained in a study of his debates with Douglas, in his 
efforts for compensated emancipation, and in his insisting that 
the Civil War be continued until the South laid down arms. 

Helpful reading on the democracy of Lincoln is to be found 
in Carl Schurz's Essay on Abraham Lincoln; in Herbert 



vi ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Croly's comments on Lincoln in his " Promise of American 
Life " ; in James Russell Lowell's Essays. 

Lincoln's Treatment of the Question of Slavery 

Lincoln's treatment of the question of slavery gives an ad- 
mirable opportunity to study his mental and moral develop- 
ment. The selections here given are sufficient to enable the 
pupil to trace the way in which he solved each successive step 
in the problem from 1837, ^^e time of his first public protest 
against the institution, to the days just before his death, when 
he was considering a policy of merciful reconstruction. 

The following questions will serve as suggestions for work- 
ing out this important study : 

1. What was the general opinion on slavery in Illinois in 1837 
when Lincoln made his first public protest against it? Did he run 
any risk of losing his place in the State Assembly by his action? 
What experience had he had with the institution before this? 

2. What was the political situation in 1845 which called out the 
letter to Williamson Durley ? What were Lincoln's political ambitions 
at the time? 

3. What was Lincoln doing when the Missouri Compromise was 
repealed, and what effect did that repeal have upon him ? 

4. Why did Lincoln leave the Whig party in 1856? What were 
the views of the new Republican Party ? 

5. What was Douglas's main argument in the debates of 1858? 
How did Lincoln answer that argument ? What were the arguments 
by which Lincoln sustained his position that slavery must be stopped 
or it would spread over the entire nation ? 

6. Was the Civil War fought to free the black man ? 

7. How did Lincoln show that slavery was inconsistent with 
democracy ? 

8. Why did Lincoln want to free the slaves by buying them ? 

9. Was emancipation a wise war measure ? 

TO. What was Lincoln's idea of reconstruction? 



PREFACE vil 

Throughout this study stress should be laid on the intel- 
lectual integrity, the courage and the willingness to sacrifice 
personal to public interest, which characterized Lincoln's succes- 
sive positions. In 1837, in 1856, in 1858, in 1861, 1862, 1863, 
1864, — at each critical moment in his connection with slavery 
questions — he risked his position by the boldness with which he 
insisted that his views should be understood. 

Books, other than those above named, useful for this study 
are " Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln," 
by Francis B. Carpenter ; " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln 
by Distinguished Men of His Times," by Allen Thorndike Rice. 

Lincoln as a Writer of English 

Abraham Lincoln's ability to serve the country was greatly 
increased by his command of English prose. The result of his 
close hard thinking could never have been as effective if he 
had not understood the art of putting thoughts into convincing 
and moving words, and at the same time conveying a sense of 
his own sincerity. His art was the logical result of a life-long 
struggle to express the ideas which interested him, so clearly 
that the humblest could understand his meaning. 

It will be well to begin a study of his English by a review of 
his schooling and his habits of reading, of writing, and of 
speaking, when a boy. In turn there should be taken up his 
study of English grammar, of surveying, and of the law. What 
were the reasons impelling him in each case ? What were his 
obstacles ? How did he meet them ? How did he succeed ? 

Two books largely formed Lincoln's style, — the Bible and 
Shakespeare. The tracing of their effect on his prose is not 
difficult and should be attempted by the pupil. 

The gradual development of his style may be traced by 
comparing extracts of different periods, — as his first public 
address in 1832 with the speech on the repeal of the Missouri 



viii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Compromise in 1854, with the Cooper Union speech in i860, and 
with the extracts from the First and Second Inaugurals. Com- 
pare in these extracts the vocabulary he commanded at different 
times, the flexibility and elegance of phrase, the elevation of 
tone, and the ability to convey feeling as well as ideas. 

A similar comparative study may be made of Lincoln's letters, 
documents too often overlooked. Take the letter to his partner 
Herndon, written in 1864, and compare with that his letters to 
Hooker, Grant, Greeley, and Mrs. Bixby here printed. 

The purest and most beautiful English he wrote is found 
in the Springfield Farewell, the Gettysburg Address, and the 
Second Inaugural, and they deserve most careful analysis 
according to the favorite methods of the individual teacher. 

It should be remembered that their full value cannot be 
appreciated unless the pupil understands the occasion which 
called each forth. 

For studies in strength and exactness of expression there are 
no writings better than Lincoln's remarks on labor and capital 
in the Annual Message of 1861, and the letters to Horace 
Greeley (August 22, 1862), to General Hooker (January 26, 
1863), and to J. C. Conkling (August 26, 1863). 

The value of the short well-chosen word and of the terse 
sentence are admirably illustrated in these extracts. 

Books which throw light on his literary qualities are Carl 
Schurz's Essay on Lincoln, Richard Watson Gilder's Intro- 
duction to his " Lincoln ; Passages from His Speeches and 
Letters " ; and James Russell Lowell's Essay on Lincoln. 

I. M. T. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction xi 

Views on Money- Loaning, Education, and Lawmaking ... 3 

Political Views in 1836 5 

First Public Protest against Slavery 6 

Letter to Williamson Durley 7 

Letter to William H. Herndon, his Law Partner, reproving 

him for Suspicion of Others 9 

Reflections on seeing Niagara Falls (1848) 10 

Notes on the Practice of Law (1850) 11 

Letter to John D. Johnston (January 2, 185 1) 13 

Letter to John D. Johnston (November 4, 185 1) 14 

Hope, the Inspiration of Labor 15 

Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Right of Self-Government 1 6 

After the Defeat of 1856 25 

" A House divided against itself " 25 

Equality of White and Black Races 31 

Republican and Democratic Principles compared 32 

Lincoln's Autobiography 37 

Slavery as the Fathers viewed it 39 

Farewell Speech to his Friends in Springfield ...... 63 

The Perpetuity of the Union . 63 

Lincoln's Reply to Secretary Seward's Offer to become the 

Head of the Administration 72 

On the Relation of Labor and Capital 73 

Message to Congress recommending Compensated Emanci- 
pation y^ 

Letter to Horace Greeley yj 

Sabbath Observance 78 

ix 



X ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

PAGE 

Extract from Annual Message 79 

Emancipation Proclamation 88 

Letter to General Joseph Hooker 90 

Proclamation for a National Fast Day 91 

Letter to General U. S. Grant 92 

Letter stating his Position in Regard to the War and to 

Emancipation 93 

Proclamation for Thanksgiving 97 

The Gettysburg Address 99 

Amnesty for those in Rebellion 100 

Suggesting that Intelligent Negroes be admitted to the Elective 

Franchise 105 

Review of Slavery Policy 106 

Letter to General U. S. Grant 108 

Letter to Mrs. Bixby . . .- 109 

Extract from Annual Message 109 

Part of Second Inaugural Address 113 

The Reconstruction of the Southern States 115 

Notes 117 



INTRODUCTION 

Abraham Lincoln was one of the most perfectly developed 
men intellectually and morally which this country has produced. 
He had the power which is the highest end of education, — that 
is, the power to think out to a logical conclusion the problems 
which life brought to him, and to express these conclusions in 
language which the simplest could understand, and which at 
the same time was distinguished in style and most effective in 
convincing and moving men. His moral power matched his 
intellectual power ; that is, when he had once made up his mind 
that a course of action was wise, no amount of persuasion or 
pressure could dissuade him from following it. He had in the 
highest degree '' the courage of his convictions." 

The superiority of Lincoln's development is the more sur- 
prising because of the circumstances under which it was worked 
out. He was bom on a small farm in Kentucky, when that 
country was still sparsely settled and its opportunities for school- 
ing were meager ; his father moved when he was but seven years 
old to a piece of uncleared land in Indiana. The log cabin 
which became his home, young Lincoln helped to build. The 
food and clothes of the family he helped to produce. He 
was strong and good-natured, and was his father's most useful 
helper in the hard task of earning a living from what proved 
to be a rather poor farm. 

His father was illiterate, unable to sign his name save with 
difficulty, and never known to read any book but the Bible. 
The boy never had, all told, over a year of schooling, and even 
this was under the itinerant system common to pioneer districts 
where the only qualifications required of a teacher were that he 



xii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be able to teach " readin', writin', and 'rithmetic to the rule of 
three," and where a master who understood a little Latin was 
looked upon as a wizard. There was but one redeeming feature 
to his boyhood education, — his mother, a gentle woman, able 
to read and write and with a genuine ambition to instruct and 
inspire her children. She gathered them about her, relating to 
them Bible stories, curious country legends, wild tales of Indians 
and of pioneer hardships, and often when it grew dark in the 
evenings, heaping the chimney place of the log cabin full of 
spicewood brush, that her boy and his sister might see to read 
their few books and to con their lessons. 

Lincoln's own mother died when he was only eight years old. 
His father married again, and fortunately for the boy, the step- 
mother proved to be as interested in his books and lessons and 
as ambitious that he should learn as his own mother had been. 
Indeed, as he grew up and his father objected to his taking time 
for reading and study, it was his stepmother who became his 
defender. 

In spite of the barrenness of his early surroundings the boy 
showed from the first a love of books and a necessity for ex- 
pressing himself in writing. As soon as he had learned to read, 
books became his constant companions. There were few in 
either the house of his father or those of his neighbors. The 
Bible, " .^sop's Fables," " Robinson Crusoe," " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," " A History of the United States," and Weems's " Life 
of Washington " comprised the store of reading matter in the 
community in which he lived, and when young Lincoln had ex- 
hausted this he began to borrow from a distance. He once told 
a friend that there was not a book he had not read within a 
radius of fifty miles of his boyhood home. The character of the 
books seems to have made little difference to him. The legends 
say that he walked as far to get a treatise of law as to get a 
volume of poetry or biography. Everything excited his eager 
curiosity, his hungry desire for new thought and expression. 



INTRODUCTION xili 

He did not simply read the books ; he absorbed them, copying 
long extracts, making them literally his own, — something which 
he could and did recite as he followed the plow, and which 
furnished him material for the long discussions he sought with 
every passing neighbor. 

When his boyhood was past and he had entered upon that 
career of Jack-of-all-trades which he was forced to pursue until 
he was nearly twenty-five years old, he continued to read much 
in the intervals of railsplitting, fiatboating, storekeeping, acting 
as village postmaster and deputy surveyor. In this period of 
life he made a thorough and critical acquaintance with Shake- 
speare and Burns. It is rare indeed that a person is found so 
well versed in Shakespeare as Lincoln was. He could quote 
pages from many of the plays and had a very clear and intelli- 
gent opinion of the meaning of difficult passages. He was fond 
of seeing the plays acted, and while in Washington as Presi- 
dent of the United States, never missed a Shakespearean play 
if he could help it. Often he sent for the leading actor after 
it was over and discussed the arrangement of the play, amazing 
his auditors by his knowledge. 

It was while Lincoln was studying Shakespeare that there 
fell into his hands a set of books which finally led him to read 
law. The incident illustrates very well the eagerness with 
which he always seized any book which came in his way and the 
avidity with which he read it. Soon after Lincoln's nomination 
to the Presidency, in i860, an ardent Republican of New Jersey 
sent A. J. Conant, a well-known portrait painter of the day, to 
Springfield to paint the portrait of the party's nominee. Mr. 
Conant confesses that he had not expected to find much of a 
subject, for Lincoln was practically unknown in the East, and 
he was the more surprised to discover that this new man pos- 
sessed a genuine, if unconventional, intellectual cultivation. Ac- 
cordingly, during the sittings, he took pains to ask Mr. Lin- 
coln many questions about his early life in order to find Out, 



xiv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

if possible, what his education had been. One day he asked 
Mr. Lincoln how he became interested in the law. " It was Black- 
stone's ' Commentaries ' that did it," said Mr. Lincoln, and then 
he related how he first happened on the books, " I was keep- 
ing store in New Salem, when one day a man who was migrat- 
ing to the West drove up with a wagon which contained his 
family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy 
an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and 
which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not 
want it, but to oblige him I bought it and paid him, I think, 
half a dollar. Without further examination I put it away in the 
store and forgot all about it. Sometime after, in overhauling 
things, I came upon the barrel and emptied its contents upon 
the floor. I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete 
edition of Blackstone's " Commentaries." I began to read those 
famous works, and I had plenty of time, for during the long 
summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, 
my customers were few and far between. " The more I read " — 
this he said with unusual emphasis — " the more intensely 
interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind 
so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them." 

Blackstone whetted his appetite for more law. Later, when 
he had become a lawyer, a politician, a man of family, the love 
of books remained, and he often read late into the night after a 
hard day at the bar, trying to make up, he said, for that chance 
at an education which he did not have as a boy. 

Lincoln began to write almost as soon as to read. Many 
doggerels have been preserved that he scrawled in his early 
exercise books, such as 

Good boys who to their books apply, 
Will all be great men by and bye. 

There are also many well-authenticated stories of attempts at 
essays and poetry. Some of these boyish performances even 



INTRODUCTION XV 

found their way into local papers, and not a few were pre- 
served by his family and have been published by his earliest 
biographers. Of course they are crude, but they all show a 
sense of the value of words and an evident pleasure in what 
Schurz calls the " comely phrase." They are never meaning- 
less. They are never flat. They show always that the writer 
had an idea of his own, and that though he might work it out 
blunderingly, he nevertheless had a real feeling of the possi- 
bilities in his medium. 

Through all the hard years of his early manhood he stuck to 
his effort to express himself by writing. He must have been 
nearly twenty years old when he began to feel the need of 
a knowledge of grammar, to realize that these blocks out of 
which he had been building sentences intuitively and imita- 
tively, governed only by his pleasure in them and by the un- 
conscious influence of his reading, were really subject to 
certain laws. He decided he must know these laws, learn how to 
put words together scientifically. The familiar story of Lincoln's 
hunt for a grammar, of his impassioned study of it before a fire 
of stumps by night after his long day's work, is at once one 
of the most pathetic and most inspiring in the history of his 
intellectual life. 

By the time Lincoln was twenty-three years of age, he felt 
himself sufficiently master of his medium to put out his first 
public document, an address to the people of Sangamon County, 
Illinois, offering himself as a candidate for the offiice of repre- 
sentative to the General Assembly of the state. This docu- 
ment is remarkable for its directness. Its author plunges at 
once into the subjects which he supposes most interesting to 
his constituents, and states his views in English which bears 
all the characteristics of his style twenty-five years later. 

From 1832 on, throughout the rest of his life, we have a 
steady series of addresses called out by the events in which he 
was most deeply interested. In addition to elaborate arguments 



^^. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

such as these are, Lincoln's writings contain several remarkable 
Shi addresses for specal occasions; preeminent among these 

'^ S:rS rS'course of his life several lectures on 
sublets quite out of politics. A very good te-P-ance ec^^u^ 
is ii this'list, as well as an address on -~ ^^^f J; 
the bulk of Lincoln's work is m the form of addresses, Dy 
rTo means confined himself to this species of composmon At 
: rious imes in his life he tried his hand at essays, whtch have 
been Tost- he even wrote occasional verse, a little of wh.ch has 
Seen preserved; and from the testimony of his assoaates we 
tnow'that ideas'for stories sometimes fhtted trough h>s head 
In Lincoln's literary output nothing is better than h.s letters 
For instance, his letters to his constituents, through wh,ch f o 
many years he did most of his elect>oneermg, form a senes 
rjolitical documents as distinguished for Aeu^ quamt phrase^ 
oloL and humor as for their frankness and shrewdness; and 
Z% letters in which he gave counsel to friends must eventu- 

allv become classic. , ,. 

Putting together all his writings, - addresses, lectures, pubhc 
and privfte iftters, and fugitive expression, - the bulk o w^k 
which resulted in the course of his life .s considerable. H s 
Tomplete works, edited by Nicolay and Hay, contamnrg fully 

"rqueltionlbly the most important of Lincoln's literary work 
is the'series of speeches made between 1854 and '^^S, - wh ch 
he developed his arguments against the extension of slavery tor 
the prese'rvation of%he Union and in favor of emanc.pat.om 
The most familiar of these are the powerful -P''^^ '° ^""^^^ 
in ,858, but they are by no means all which are worth attenton. 
The 'speech made in X856, when he publicly severed his con^ 
nection with the old Whig party and joined the newly found d 
Republican organization, is one of the most -'go™"^ ^"^ el^ 
quent he ever delivered. It is doubtful if any speech of his 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

whole career produced such an extraordinary effect. So moved 
were his audience that the very reporters forgot to take notes, 
and it was supposed until recently that no notes of it had been 
preserved. It thus became known all over Illinois as Lincoln's 
'' Lost Speech." It is only within a few years that a report of 
this speech has been found. 

It is doubtful if any one who did not live through the exciting 
decade before the war, or who has not made some special study 
of Lincoln's life, realizes the effect of these speeches. They really 
introduced him to the nation. Before that he had been an un- 
known man. Even when he began to debate with Douglas in 
1858 he was so little known and appreciated that his friends in 
Illinois were afraid of a fiasco. They could not believe that this 
great, gaunt, friendly man, with his simple ways and his modest 
air, could match the most brilliant and popular orator of the day. 
But as the debate went on, it became clear to them that Lin- 
coln was the stronger. They began to ask each other if it was 
possible that Lincoln, whom they had known all their lives, with 
whom they rode the circuit, told stories, and played practical 
jokes, could be a great man. They began to receive letters from 
the East, " Who is this Lincoln ? " "Do you realize," wrote one 
great man of the day to the chairman of the Republican com- 
mittee, ''that no greater speeches on public questions have been 
made in the history of our country, that his knowledge of the 
question is profound, his logic unanswerable, his style inimi- 
table ? " Before the campaign was over, his friends all made 
up their minds that Lincoln was, in fact, a great man. 

There was so strong an interest in him in the East, awakened 
by the debates with Douglas, that he was invited to speak at 
Cooper Union, the greatest compliment that could be paid to 
a public speaker in that day. 

Mr. Lincoln's audience was a notable one even for New 
York. It included William Cullen Bryant, who introduced him, 
Horace Greeley, David Dudley Field, and many more well-known 



xviii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

men of the day. It is doubtful if even Lincoln's best friends 
did not fear that his queer manner and quaint diction might 
amuse people so much that they would fail to catch the weight 
of his logic. But to their surprise there was universal enthu- 
siasm over the intellectual and literary quality of the address. 
Where has this man learned his logic and his English ? the 
audience asked. The question was a proper one, for these 
antislavery speeches of Lincoln are one of the greatest intellec- 
tual feats as well as one of the most distinguished literary per- 
formances any American has achieved. To begin with, the 
man was saturated with his subject, — the very essential of 
any great literary performance. He had studied it, handled it, 
lived with it, until when he came to present it he constructed 
an argument which was practically flawless. He was like a 
master builder putting up the framework of a great building. 
Every timber fits, every nail goes into the exact spot where it 
is needed, and no useless nail is driven. It is a strong, well- 
proportioned, sound framework. Now the flawless argument 
is the very life of a piece of literature, for it is that which 
makes the appeal to the intellect. Let the argument be incom- 
plete, shifty, interlaid with shams or tricks, and the intellect will 
not give its complete assent. The thing is not " convincing," 
we say to-day. Now Lincoln was always convincing in his anti- 
slavery addresses and letters. So sound was he that no trick 
of oratory, no subtility of argument, no brutality of attack on 
Douglas's part could surprise him in the debates. His later 
work was equally strong in its logic. 

Had not Lincoln worked as steadily and as hard on his ex- 
pression as he did on his argument, the effect of his anti- 
slavery speeches and letters would have been less immediate 
and less general. But he had constant thought of his form. He 
wanted to be " clear," he said. Unless he could be easily un- 
derstood he knew he could not easily persuade, and it was for 
this he struggled throughout his public life, with the result that 



INTRODUCTION XIX 

a style more lucid than that which he had achieved before his 
death is scarcely conceivable. I doubt if it was the supreme 
elegance of clear and simple forms of expression which caused 
Lincoln to cultivate this style, though unquestionably he had an 
instinctive feeling for the simple expression. He was rather 
driven to it by what was in him an intellectual necessity. He 
had a mind which was never quiet until it had solved to its own 
satisfaction the questions with which it struggled. Even in his 
boyhood days his companions noticed that he constantly was 
searching for the reason of things and that he " explained so 
clearly." To a friend who asked him once how he had achieved 
his pure style he said : '' When a mere child, I used to get 
irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not 
understand. I do not think that I ever got angry at anything 
else in my life ; but that always disturbed my temper, and has 
ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after 
hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and 
spending no small part of the night walking up and down, 
trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of 
their, to me, dark sayings. 

" I could not sleep when I got on such a hunt for an idea 
until I had caught it ; and when I thought I had got it, I was 
not satisfied until I had put it in a language plain enough, as I 
thought, for any boy to comprehend. This was a kind of a pas- 
sion with me, and it has stuck by me ; for I am never easy 
now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it 
north, and bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded 
it west." 

This is exactly what he did in his public speeches and letters. 
When he had found what seemed to him the truth of a subject, 
he tried to put it into a form so simple that nobody could 
mistake his meaning. He stated his case with mathematical 
exactness, in the fewest words possible, and always with the 
simplest words. The result was that his statements of what 



XX ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he considered the vital points in any great question are really 
axioms. In the debates with Douglas, for example, his vital 
arguments were condensed into a few phrases which appear 
again and again. The most notable example is probably the 
famous paragraph of his first speech in the campaign, where he 
stated the position on which he intended to stand in the contest. 

" ' A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect 
the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. 
It will become all one thing or all the other." 

But while the appeal to the intellect is so strong in Lincoln's 
literary work, the appeal to the emotions is hardly less. He 
could move the heart to its depths. Again and again in his 
public career he poured forth his emotions in words so elevated, 
in imagery so lofty, that the effect can only be compared to 
that of some noble sacred poem. Take for instance, the clos- 
ing paragraphs of the Second Inaugural : 

" Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid 
by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether.' 

- " With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; 
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 

The same lofty feeling and imagery characterize Lincoln's 
Gettysburg speech. In this speech, universally acknowledged 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

to be one of the most perfect bits of English prose ever written, 
we have Lincoln's clearness of expression admirably illustrated, 
while the sympathetic charm which pervades it thrills the heart 
to-day as deeply as it did forty years ago. 

But Lincoln's English has something in it besides its clear- 
ness and its loftiness. It has a delightful original flavor, dis- 
tinctive and natural, untainted by conventional culture, which 
having once caught you always recognize. In no particular is 
this originality more conspicuous than in the quaint figures of 
speech with which he illustrates his meaning. It was the fash- 
ion of his time to seek metaphors and other embellishments in 
the classics. '' He never went among the ancients for figures," 
he used to say. Instead he drew them from his own experi- 
ence. That experience had been humble enough, but it yielded 
in his hands a fruitful crop of powerful illustrations. Some of 
the most typical of these occur in his dispatches to officers dur- 
ing the war. Such was his dispatch to Hooker in June, 1863. 
Fearing that Hooker might cross to the south of the Rappa- 
hannock and give Lee a chance to get behind the Federals, he 
wrote, " I would not take any risk of being entangled up on 
the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be 
torn by dogs front and rear without a fair chance to gore one 
way or kick the other." Equally pertinent was his message 
sent a few days later to the same general : "If the head of 
Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank 
road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal 
must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him .? " — 
and nothing could have been better than his advice to Grant 
in 1864, — " Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke 
as much as possible." 

Lincoln's private letters are all marked by this distinctive 
personal style. There have been published a series of letters to 
a stepbrother who must have been a shiftless fellow, which are 
as good examples of well-put common sense as anything Poor 



xxii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Richard himself ever gave us. His letter to General Hooker in 
January, 1863, when the command of the Army of the Potomac 
was given into his charge, is a perfect example of the wise and 
kindly, yet firm, writing which Lincoln could employ when he 
thought best. 

It is not difficult to see now as we study Lincoln's life that his 
mastery of expression was of incalculable value in dealing with 
the terrible problems of a Civil War President. For instance, 
his aptness in illustrating his meaning by stories and figures 
solved many a problem for the country. At first men com- 
plained at what they called his, triviality, his buffonery. What 
right had the President of the United States to tell stories and 
laugh when the country was at war ? Yet gradually the dis- 
cerning began to see that every one of his stories settled a 
question. Frequently, when the Cabinet was perplexed and 
fearful, it was one of Lincoln's stories which broke its tense, 
irritable mood, clearing up doubt and torment as a shower 
clears the hot overburdened air. Again and again, commis- 
sions of good but narrow men came to him to present a theory 
which, if adopted, they were sure would alone end the war, free 
the slave, satisfy the South, and restore happiness. The Presi- 
dent simply told them a story and they filed out without a word, 
the theory shattered in their hands. These stories were not 
classic. They were not drawn from literature or history ; fre- 
quently they were coarse in grain. They came straight from 
raw human life as Lincoln had observed it, were full of humor, 
not unlike that of Rabelais, and of homely pioneer picturesque- 
ness ; but they were profound in their philosophy and truth- 
fulness, and no argument he or any other could have advanced 
would have had their convincing force. 

The source of his inexhaustible supply of stories was always 
a mystery to his associates. Did he invent them ? If not, where 
did he get them ? The greater majority no doubt dated back to 
his early life in Illinois when, as a postmaster and a surveyor, 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

and later as an itinerant lawyer and a member of the Illinois 
State Assembly, he met constantly large numbers of quaint and 
original people, and when he was thrown much with a class of 
men who, for lack of other amusements, entertained one another 
with stories. A new story in a community like that in which 
Lincoln spent his earlier manhood has an importance not unlike 
that of a new play or a new book in a town of to-day. Every- 
body wants to hear it, and hearing it, everybody discusses it 
and passes judgment on it. In Springfield, where Lincoln lived 
at this period, nobody was more eager than he to hear each 
man's new stories. Let one of his friends go away for a trip, 
and his first greeting on the man's return would be, " Any new 
stories } " And if the answer was affirmative, everything must 
wait until he heard them. If they pleased him, forthwith they 
were added to his repertoire. He rarely told a story, however, 
simply for the sake of telling it. To him it was an argument or 
explanation, sometimes even an exhortation. And because he 
told it simply to illustrate, he rarely told it twice alike. In order 
to make it serve his purpose he was obliged to work it over, 
dressing it in new colors and giving the characters new sur- 
roundings, so as to make them more suitable to his immediate 
object. It thus happens that there can hardly be said to be an 
original version of a '' Lincoln story." For example, the story 
of Sykes's dog is well known to most of us. Sykes owned an 
ill-favored cur to which he was devoted but which, because of its 
ugly looks and its propensity for worrying inoffensive pedestrians, 
was heartily despised by his friends. One day a few desperate 
individuals induced Sykes's dog to swallow a piece of meat in 
which a charge of gunpowder with fuse attached was concealed. 
The meat was no sooner down than the fuse was lighted and 
the dog was scattered over the road. When Sykes came up and 
saw the situation he made a feeble effort to collect the pieces, 
but soon gave it up, remarking sorrowfully that he guessed that 
dog's days of usefulness were ended. After the capture of 



xxiv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Vicksburg a delegation waited on Mr. Lincoln complaining be- 
cause Grant had paroled Pemberton's army. Pemberton, they 
said, would soon have the men together again. Mr. Lincoln did 
not attempt to argue with them. He simply told them the story 
of Sykes's dog, remarking, as he ended, that he guessed Pember- 
ton's army was in about the same condition as the dog. He 
told the same story on other occasions when delegations came 
to him to criticize the paroling of Confederate troops. Each 
time, if we believe his auditors, the story had its peculiar color. 
Thus there were several authentic versions of the one story. 

Match a highly disciplined intellect with an equally disciplined 
moral sense and you have conduct of the highest order, and 
that is what we find in Abraham Lincoln. He could do more 
than solve problems, he could fit his conduct to the solution. 
And this moral discipline was as much the result of training 
from boyhood as his intellectual discipline. He had a keen notion 
of right and wrong as a boy, and was willing to fight for what 
he believed right ; although he was by no means a fighting boy. 
On the contrary, he was peaceable and companionable, loving 
games, tests of strength, talk, debates, jokes, — jokes so rough 
that they might often be called horseplay. 

All the stories left us of his early life, however, show that 
while he would not fight for the sake of fighting, he did not 
hesitate to show his power where it was a case of injustice. 
There is a story of his defeat of the leader of a gang of bad 
boys in the neighborhood of his early home in Sangamon 
County, which may be regarded as typical of his attitude. His 
thrashing of the leader of the Clary's Grove gang brought 
him great honor in the community, and certainly made for the 
future order and peace of the neighborhood. 

He not only had a contempt for the bully, but sympathy with 
the weak. So far as we know, Lincoln's first active sympathy 
with the condition of the negro came from a visit to a slave 
market in New Orleans. All that he saw in his youth of the 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

outside world came from an occasional trip on a flatboat down 
the Mississippi River to New Orleans. There is no doubt that 
these trips were a real factor in the education of this wide- 
awake boy. It was on one of these trips that he visited a slave 
market, and his impressions were so strong that there is reason 
to believe that he often referred to the experience in discussing 
the slave question in after years. Thus his sympathies had been 
early stirred on the question ; so that when the time came that 
he had an opportunity to express himself, as it did first in 
1837, he was the quicker to do it. He not only had an intel- 
lectual conviction that slavery was wrong, but he had the back- 
ing of his emotions. Nevertheless, it must have taken a great 
deal of courage to sign a public protest against the institution 
as early as he did. He was only twenty-eight years of age and 
a member of the Illinois legislature. Resolutions had been 
brought up in the assembly disapproving of the formation of 
abolition societies, declaring that the right of property in slaves 
was sacred, and that the general government could not fairly 
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent 
of the citizens of the District. Lincoln and one of his fellow 
representatives were the only members of the body to protest 
against these resolutions. It is not the first proof that we have 
that he was already courageous enough to fit his conduct to 
his convictions, but it is certainly the most decisive. From this 
time his political courage and consistency showed itself in many 
different ways. He was in Congress when the Mexican War 
broke out ; and his condemnation of the course of the United 
States towards Mexico in this unjust and unnecessary war, 
shows what kind of material he was made of. He had to sub- 
mit to very severe criticism, even from many of his best friends 
in Illinois, for his course, but it only made him the more effec- 
tive in his opposition. 

Lincoln's moral courage in public life had a severe test in the 
'50's when the slave question became acute. He had practically 



xxvi ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

given up politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
aroused him as nothing before ever had. He immediately began 
to discuss the question in public and private. And very early in 
these discussions, he came to the conclusion v^hich later became 
the backbone of his great debate with Douglas : that the country 
could not exist half slave and half free ; that it must be all one 
thing, or all the other. It was a most unpopular doctrine in his 
own party, the Whig, and he found himself lined up with a few 
bolting Whigs and Democrats, the nucleus which, in 1856, 
formed itself into the Republican Party. Ardent Whig that he 
had been, the break was a serious matter to Mr. Lincoln ; and 
he did not make it until he was convinced it was only through a 
new organization that the advance of slavery could be stopped. 
Perhaps no more impressive proof of Lincoln's fidelity to 
principle is found in his whole career than his refusal, in his 
debate with Douglas, to allow his opponent to manipulate his 
argument in such a way that it would mean one thing in the 
North and another thing in the South. Mr. Lincoln insisted on 
asking questions of Douglas which made it possible for the 
latter to satisfy the people of Illinois that he was sound on the 
slavery question. The result was that he was elected, Lincoln 
defeated. But these answers which satisfied Illinois dissatisfied 
the South. They were in contradiction with what Douglas had 
persuaded the South that he believed. Lincoln showed the 
country that Douglas '' was carrying water on both shoulders." 
Lincoln realized what he was doing, but he persisted in asking 
the questions which helped his own defeat, because he was 
determined to do his part in making the people of the country 
understand the question at issue. That is, he held it of more 
importance that the country should be clear in its views and 
sound in its conclusions, than that he should be elected, or 
that his party be successful. He showed, in fact, the highest 
order of political morality. And that such political morality is 
in the long run the best of policies, the fact of his nomination 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

and election to the presidency, two years later, is good enough 
evidence. 

There is no episode in Mr. Lincoln's administration as Presi- 
dent of the United States which is better evidence of his funda- 
mental sense of justice than his efforts, early in the war, to 
bring about what is called compensated emancipation ; that is, to 
persuade Congress to buy and free the slaves of the Southern 
states. He saw very clearly that emancipation would probably 
be the result of the war to save the Union. He saw that it 
might be necessary as a war measure. He revolted against the 
idea of confiscating the property of the South, though that prop- 
erty might be in men. Therefore he worked out the plan of 
buying the blacks. I doubt if there was any experience of 
his career as President of the United States which gave him 
greater regret than the failure of this measure. The whole 
episode is an excellent example of the humanity and sense of 
justice which underlay all of his public policy, — qualities, which, 
as I have said, had their foundation in his youth, and which 
were as logical an outcome of the moral training which he gave 
himself as his power of logical thought and of clear and elo- 
quent expression were the results of his intellectual training. 

Ida M. Tarbell 



SELECTIONS FROM 

THE LETTERS, SPEECHES, AND STATE 

PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



VIEWS ON MONEY-LOANING, EDUCATION, AND 
LAWMAKING 

(Extract from first public address, March i, 1832. Age, 23 years) 

... It appears that the practice of loaning money at exor- 
bitant rates of interest has already been opened as a field for 
discussion ; so I suppose I may enter upon it without claiming 
the honor, or risking the danger which may await its first 
explorer. It seems as though we are never to have an end to 5 
this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially 
to the general interests of the community as a direct tax of 
several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for the 
benefit of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made 
fixing the limits of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of 10 
opinion, may be made without materially injuring any class 
of people. In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be 
means found to cheat the law ; while in all other cases it would 
have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on 
this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be 15 
such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be 
justified in cases of greatest necessity. 

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any 
plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as 
the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged 20 
in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, 
and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and 
other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of 
our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, 
even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages 25 
and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the 

3 



^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, 
for themselves. 

For my part, I desire to see the time when education — and 
by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry — shall 
5 become much more general than at present, and should be 
gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the 
advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to 
accelerate that happy period. 

With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to 
lo be necessary. Many respectable men have suggested that our 
estray laws, the law respecting the issuing of executions, the 
road law, and some others, are deficient in their present form, 
and require alterations. But, considering the great probability 
that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should 
15 prefer not meddling with them, unless they were first attacked 
by others ; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a 
duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to 
the advancement of justice. 

But, fellow citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great de- 
20 gree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable 
I have already been more presuming than becomes me. However, 
upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I 
have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them ; 
but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to 
25 be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my 
opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them. 

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it 
be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great 
as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering 
30 myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in 
gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, 
and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever 
remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or 
popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown 



POLITICAL VIEWS IN 1836 5 

exclusively upon the independent voters of the country ; and, if 
elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall 
be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But, if the good 
people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, 
I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much s 
chagrined. 

POLITICAL VIEWS IN 1836 
(Age, 27 years) 

New Salem, June 13, 1836 
To THE Editor of the Jourtial : 

In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication, over 
the signature of " Many Voters," in which the candidates who 
are announced in the Journal are called upon to '' show their 
hands." Agreed. Here 's mine. 10 

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who 
assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting 
all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms 
(by no means excluding females). 

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my 15 
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me. 

While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by 
their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of know- 
ing what their will is ; and upon all others I shall do what my 
own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. 20 
Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of 
the sales of the public lands to the several states, to enable 
our state, in common with others, to dig canals and construct 
railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on it. 

If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for 25 

Husfh L. White for President.^ ^^ . ,, 

^ Very respectfully 

A. Lincoln 

* Judge Hugh L. White, Democratic Senator from Tennessee, 1825 to 
1839, was nominated by a combination of Whigs and anti-Jackson 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

FIRST PUBLIC PROTEST AGAINST SLAVERY 

(March 3, 1837. Age, 28 years) 
The following protest was presented to the House March 3, 
1837, which was read and ordered to be spread on the journals, 
to wit : 

Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed 

5 both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, 

the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same. 

They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on 

both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of 

abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils. 

10 They believe that the Congress of the United States has no 

power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of 

slavery in the different states. 

They believe that the Congress of the United States has the 
power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District 
15 of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, 
unless at the request of the people of the District. 

The difference between these opinions and those contained 
in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest. "* 

Dan Stone 
A. Lincoln 
Represefitatives from the county of Sa?tgamon 

Democrats for President in 1836. He received the electoral votes of 

Tennessee and Georgia. 

* The resolutions protested against were as follows : 

" Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Illinois : 

" That we highly disapprove of the formation of Abolition Societies, 

and of the doctrines promulgated by them. 

" That the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slaveholding 

States by the Federal Constitution, and that they cannot be deprived of 

that right without their consent. 

" That the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District, 

without a manifest breach of good faith. 



LETTER TO WILLIAMSON DURLEY 7 

LETTER TO WILLIAMSON DURLEY 

Springfield, October 3, 1845 
When I saw you at home, it was agreed that I should write 
to you and your brother Madison. Until I then saw you I was 
not aware of your being what is generally called an abolitionist, 
or, as you call yourself, a Liberty man, though I well knew 
there were many such in your country. 5 

I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to bring 
about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the Whigs 
proper and such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in principle 
on all questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can per- 
ceive, by such union neither party need yield anything on the 10 
point in difference between them. If the Whig abolitionists of 
New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be 
President. Whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not 
annexed ; whereas, by the division, all that either had at stake 
in the contest was lost. And, indeed, it was extremely probable 15 
beforehand, that such would be the result. As I have always 
understood, the Liberty men deprecated the annexation of Texas 
extremely ; and this being so, why they should refuse to cast 
their votes [so] as to prevent it, even to me seemed wonderful. 
What was their process of reasoning, I can only judge- from 20 
what a single one of them told me. It was this : " We are not 
to do evil that good may come." This general proposition is 
doubtless correct ; but did it apply ? If by your votes you could 
have prevented the extejision, etc., of slavery would it not have 
been good, and not evil, so to have used your votes, even though 25 
it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder ? By the fruit 
the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot bring forth 
good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been 

" That the Governor be requested to transmit to the States of Vir- 
ginia, Alabama, Mississippi, New York, and Connecticut a copy of the 
foregoing report and resolutions." 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing 
have been evil ? 

But I will not argue further. I perhaps ought to say that 
individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. 
5 I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch 
as they were already a free republican people on our own 
model. On the other hand, I never could very clearly see how 
the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always 
seerned to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal 

lo numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken 
because of annexation, still there would be just so many the 
fewer left where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to 
some extent that with annexation, some slaves may be sent to 
Texas and continued in slavery that otherwise might have been 

1 5 liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I think annex- 
ation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free 
states, due to the union of the states, and perhaps to liberty 
itself (paradox though it may seem), to let the slavery of the 
other states alone ; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be 

20 equally clear that we should never knowingly lend ourselves, 

- directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural 
death — to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer 
exist in the old. Of course I am not now considering what would 
be our duty in cases of insurrection among the slaves. To recur 

25 to the Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have 
viewed annexation as a much greater evil than ever I did, and 
I would like to convince you, if I could, that they could haye 
prevented it, if they had chosen. 

I intend this letter for you and Madison together, and if you 

30 and he, or either, shall think fit to drop me a line, I shall be 

pleased. 

Yours with respect 

A. Lincoln 



LETTER TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON 9 

LETTER TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON, HIS LAW 

PARTNER, REPROVING HIM FOR 

SUSPICION OF OTHERS 

^ „^ Washington, July 10, 1848 

Dear William : 

Your letter covering the newspaper slips was received last 
night. The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to me ; 
and I cannot but think there' is some mistake in your impres- 
sion of the motives of the old men. I suppose I am now one 
of the old men ; and I declare, on my veracity, which I think is 5 
good with you, that nothing could afford me more satisfaction 
than to learn that you and others of my young friends at home 
are doing battle in the contest, and endearing themselves to the 
people, and taking a stand far above any I have ever been able 
to reach in their admiration. I cannot conceive that other old 10 
men feel differently. Of course I cannot demonstrate what I 
say ; but I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungen- 
erously thrust back. I hardly know what to say. The way for 
a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, 
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me 15 
to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any 
man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous at- 
tempts to keep a young man down ; and they will succeed, too, 
if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to 
brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this 20 
feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to 
fall into it. 

Now, in what I have said, I am sure you will suspect nothing 
but sincere friendship. I would save you from a fatal error. 
You have been a laborious, studious young man. You are far 25 
better informed on almost all subjects than I have ever been. 
You cannot fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your 
mind to be improperly directed. I have somewhat the advantage 



lO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of you in the world's experience, merely by being older; and 
it is this that induces me to advise. 

Your friend, as ever 

A. Lincoln 

REFLECTIONS ON SEEING NIAGARA FALLS (1848) 

Niagara Falls ! By what mysterious power is it that millions 
and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon 

,5 Niagara Falls ? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every 
effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would 
anticipate without seeing it. If the water moving onward in a 
great river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog 
of a hundred feet in descent in the bottom of the river, it is 

10 plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that 
point. It is also plain, the water, thus plunging, will foam and 
roar, and send up a mist continuously, in which last, during 
sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere physical 
of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part 

1 5 of that world's wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emo- 
tion is its great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the 
plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn its way 
back to its present position ; he will ascertain how fast it is wear- 
ing now, and so get a basis for determining how long it has 

20 been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate 
by it that this world is at least fourteen thousand years old. A 
philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, " Niagara Falls 
is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus 
water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand 

25 square miles of the earth's surface." He will estimate with ap- 
proximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water 
fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each 
minute — thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same 
weight, through the same space, in the same time. And then 



NOTES ON THE PRACTICE OF LAW (1850) 1 1 

the further reflection comes that this vast amount of water, con- 
stantly pounding down, is supplied by an equal amount con- 
stantly lifted up, by the sun ; and still he says, " If this much is 
lifted up for this one space of two or three hundred thousand 
square miles, an equal amount must be lifted up for every other 5 
equal space " ; and he is overwhelmed in the contemplation of 
the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in the quiet noise- 
less operation of lifting water up to be rained down again. 

But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When 
Columbus first sought this continent — when Christ suffered on 10 
the cross — when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea — nay, 
even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker : then, 
as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of 
extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have 
gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Contemporary with the first 1 5 
race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong 
and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The mammoth 
and mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous 
bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara 
— in that long, long time never still for a single moment [never 20 
dried], never froze, never slept, never rested. 

NOTES ON THE PRACTICE OF LAW (1850) 

. . . Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to 
compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the 
nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and 
waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior 25 
opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business 
enough. 

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found 
than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend 
than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search 30 
of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his pocket ? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profes- 
sion which should drive such men out of it. 

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere ques- 
tion of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller 
5 justice is done to both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee 
should never be claimed. As a general rule never take your 
whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. 
When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common 
mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if some- 

lo thing was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. 
And when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely 
lack skill and diligence in the performance. Settle the amount 
of fee and take a note in advance. Then you will feel that you 
are working for something, and you are sure to do your work 

15 faithfully and well. . . . 

There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily 
dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what ex- 
tent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon 
lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression 

20 of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is 
common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law 
for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief — resolve 
to be honest at all events ; and if in your own judgment you 
cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being 

25 a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the 
choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave. 



LETTER TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON 13 

LETTER TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON 

January 2, 1851 
Dear Johnston : 

Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to 
comply with now. At the various times when I have helped 
you a little you have said to me, ^' We can get along very well 
now" ; but in a veiy short time I find you in the same difficulty 
again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your con- 5 
duct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, 
and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, 
you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do 
not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, 
merely because it does not seem to you that you could get 10 
much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole 
difficulty ; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to 
your children, that you should break the habit. It is more 
important to them, because they have longer to live, and can 
keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they 15 
can get out after they are in. 

You are now in need of some money ; and what I propose 
is, that you shall go to work, " tooth and nail," for somebody 
who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take 
charge of your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make 20 
the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in 
discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get ; and, to secure 
you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for 
every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get 
for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebted- 25 
ness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire 
yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, 
making twenty dollars^ a month for your work. In this I do 
not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or 
the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at it 30 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles County. 
Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, 
what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from 
getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of 
5 debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say 
you would almost give your place in heaven for seventy or 
eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very cheap, 
for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy 
or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say if I 

10 will furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and, if 
you don't pay the money back, you will deliver possession. 
Nonsense ! If you can't now live with the land, how will you 
then live without it ? You have always been kind to me, and I 
do not mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will 

15 but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty 

times eighty dollars to you. 

Affectionately your brother 

A. Lincoln 



LETTER TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON 

Shelbyville, November 4, 185 1 
Dear Brother: 

When I came into Charleston day before yesterday, I learned 
that you are anxious to sell the land where you live and move 
to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and can- 

20 not but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you 
do in Missouri better than here ? Is the land any richer ? Can 
you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats 
without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do 
your work for you ? If you intend to go to work, there is no 

25 better place than right where you are ; if you do not intend to 
go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and 
crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have 



HOPE, THE INSPIRATION OF LABOR 15 

raised no crop this year ; and what you really want is to sell 
the land, get the money, and spend it. Part with the land you 
have, and, my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big 
enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you will 
spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat, 5 
drink, and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, 
I feel it my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I 
feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on 
mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for 
mother while she lives ; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent 10 
for enough to support her — at least, it will rent for something. 
Her dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and 
no thanks to me. Now, do not misunderstand this letter ; I do 
not write it in any unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to 
get you to face the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because 1 5 
you have idled away all your time. Your thousand pretenses for 
not getting along better are all nonsense ; they deceive nobody 
but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your case. 



HOPE, THE INSPIRATION OF LABOR 

(Fragment written about July i, 1854) 

Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter 
be of the British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. 20 
We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off 
than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know whereof 
they speak ! There is no permanent class of hired laborers 
amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The 
hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account to-day, and 25 
will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement — 
improvement in condition — is the order of things in a society 
of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the ef- 
fort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders 



l6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of others is the great durable curse of the race. Originally a 
curse for transgression upon the whole race, when, as by slav- 
ery, it is concentrated on a part only, it becomes the double- 
refined curse of God upon his creatures. 
5 Free labor has the inspiration of hope ; pure slavery has no 
hope. The power of hope upon human exertion and happiness 
• is wonderful. The slave master himself has a conception of it, 
and hence the system of tasks among slaves. The slave whom 
you cannot drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of 

10 hemp in a day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and 
promise him pay for all he does over, he will break you a hun- 
dred and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod. And 
yet perhaps it does not occur to you that to the extent of 
your gain in the case, you have given up the slave system and 

15 adopted the free system of labor. 

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 
THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 

(Extracts from speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854) 

... I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong — wrong 
in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and 
wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every 
other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined 

20 to take it. 

This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real 
zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it 
because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it 
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence 

25 in the world ; enables the enemies of free institutions with 
plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites ; causes the real friends of 
freedom to doubt our sincerity ; and especially because it forces 
so many good men among ourselves into an open war with 



REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 1/ 

the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the 
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no 
right principle of action but self-interest. 

Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no preju- 
dice against the Southern people. They are just what we 5 
would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among 
them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among 
us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the 
masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on 
both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, 10 
and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were 
out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free 
their slaves, go North and become tiptop abolitionists, while some 
Northern ones go South and become most cruel slave masters. 

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible 15 
for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. 
When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very 
difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can under- 
stand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them 
for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all 20 
earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do 
as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to 
free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own 
native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me 
that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be 25 
in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If 
they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in 
the next ten days ; and there are not surplus shipping and sur- 
plus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. 
What then ? Free them all, and keep them among us as under- 30 
lings ? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition ? I 
think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point 
is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What 
next ? Free them, and make them politically and socially our 



I8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

equals. My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine 
would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites 
will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound 
judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. 
5 A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be 
safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It 
does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might 
be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake 
to judge our brethren of the South. 

lo When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowl- 
edge them — not grudgingly, but fully and fairly ; and I would 
give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives 
which should not in its stringency be more likely to carry a free 
man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an 

15 innocent one. 

But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for 
permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it 
would for reviving the African slave trade by law. The law 
which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which 

20 has so long forbidden the taking of them into Nebraska, can 
hardly be distinguished on any moral principle, and the repeal 
of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of 
the latter. . . . 

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the 

^5 Missouri Compromise is still to come. That argument is '' the 
sacred right of self-government." It seems our distinguished 
senator has found great difficulty in getting his antagonists, 
even in the Senate, to meet him fairly on this argument. Some 
poet * has said : 

30 Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quota- 
tion, I meet that argument — I rush in — I take that bull by 

* Alexander Pope, in " Essay on Criticism." 



REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 19 

the horns. I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of 
self-government. My faith in the proposition that each man 
should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively 
his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in 
me. I extend the principle to communities of men as well as to 5 
individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as well 
as naturally just : politically wise in saving us from broils about 
matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I 
would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or 
the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government 10 
is right, — absolutely and eternally right, — but it has no just 
application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say 
that whether it has such application depends upon whether a 
negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, in that case he 
who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what 15 
he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that 
extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he too 
shall not govern himself .? When the white man governs himself, 
that is self-government ; but when he governs himself and also 
governs another man, that is more than self-government — that 20 
is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith 
teaches me that '' all men are created equal," and that there can 
be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave 
of another. 

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, 25 
paraphrases our argument by saying : '' The white people of 
Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are 
not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes ! " 

Well ! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will 
continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I 30 
do not say the contrary. What I do say is that no man is good 
enough to govern another man without that other's consent. I 
say this is the leading principle, the sheet anchor of American 
republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence says : 



20 " ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
5 among men, deriving their just powers from the consent 

OF THE GOVERNED. 

I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, ac- 
cording to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are 
derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of 

10 master and slave is pro tafito a total violation of this principle. 
The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but 
he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those 
which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an 
equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self- 

15 government. 

Let it not be said I am contending for the establishment of 
poHtical and social equality between the whites and blacks. I 
have already said the contrary. I am not combating the argu- 
ment of necessity, arising from the fact that the blacks are 

20 already among us ; but I am combating what is set up as moral 
argument for allowing them to be taken where they have never 
yet been — arguing against the extension of a bad thing, which, 
where it already exists, we must of necessity manage as we 
best can. 

25 In support of his application of the doctrine of self-govern- 
ment, Senator Douglas has sought to bring to his aid the opin- 
ions and examples of our Revolutionary fathers. I am glad he 
has done this. I love the sentiments of those old-time men, and 
shall be most happy to abide by their opinions. He shows us 

30 that when it was in contemplation for the colonies to break off 
from Great Britain, and set up a new government for themselves, 
several of the states instructed their delegates to go for the 
measure, provided each state should be allowed to regulate its 
domestic concerns in its own way. I do not quote ; but this in 



REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 21 

substance. This was right ; I see nothing objectionable in it. 
I also think it probable that it had some reference to the exist- 
ence of slavery among them. I will not deny that it had. But 
had it any reference to the carrying of slavery into new coun- 
tries ? That is the question, and we will let the fathers themselves 5 
answer it. 

This same generation of men, and mostly the same individ- 
uals of the generation who declared this principle, who declared 
independence, who fought the War of the Revolution through, 
who afterward made the Constitution under which we still live 10 
— these same men passed the Ordinance of '87, declaring that 
slavery should never go to the Northwest Territory. I have no 
doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this. 
It is a question of discrimination between them and him. But 
there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming that their 15 
opinions, their example, their authority, are on his side in the 
controversy. 

Again, is not Nebraska, while a territory, a part of us ? Do 
we not own the country ? And if we surrender the control of it, 
do we not surrender the right of self-government ? It is part 20 
of ourselves. If you say we shall not control it, because it is 
only part, the same is true of every other part ; and when all 
the parts are gone, what has become of the whole ? What is 
then left of us ? What use for the general government, when 
there is nothing left for it to govern? 25 

But you say this question should be left -to the people of 
Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested. If this 
be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for him- 
self whether he will have slaves. What better moral right have 
thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say that the thirty-second shall 30 
not hold slaves than the people of the thirty-one states have to 
say that slavery shall not go into the thirty-second state at all ? 

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take 
and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

where they can buy them cheapest ; and that, undoubtedly, will 
be on the coast of Africa, provided you will consent not to hang 
them for going there to buy them. You must remove this re- 
striction, too, from the sacred right of self-government. I am 

5 aware, you say, that taking slaves from the states to Nebraska 
does not make slaves of freemen ; but the African slave trader 
can say just as much. He does not catch free negroes and 
bring them here. He finds them already slaves in the hands of 
their black captors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a 

lo red cotton handkerchief a head. This is very cheap, and it is a 
great abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang 
men for engaging in this profitable trade. 

Another important objection to this application of the right 
of self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the 

15 succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-govern- 
ment. The first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent 
many cannot easily get it out. How common is the remark now 
in the slave states, "If we were only clear of our slaves, how 
much better it would be for us." They are actually deprived of 

20 the privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the ac- 
tion of a very few in the beginning. The same thing was true 
of the whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed. 

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new terri- 
tories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who 

25 may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use 
shall be made of these territories. We want them for homes 
of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable 
extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave states are 
places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. 

30 New free states are the places for poor people to go to, and 
better their condition. For this use the nation needs these 
territories. 

Still further : there are constitutional relations between the 
slave and free states which are degrading to the latter. We 



REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 23 

are under legal obligations to catch and return their runaway 
slaves to them : a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I be- 
lieve, as a general rule, the slaveholders will not perform for 
one another. Then again, in the control of the government — 
the management of the partnership affairs — they have greatly 5 
the advantage of us. By the Constitution each state has two 
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to 
the number of its people, and each has a number of presidential 
electors equal to the whole number of its senators and repre- 
sentatives together. But in ascertaining the number of the 10 
people for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal 
to three whites. The slaves do not vote ; they are only counted 
and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's 
votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a 
comparison of the states of South Carolina and Maine. South 15 
Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine ; South 
Carolina has eight presidential electors, and so has Maine. This 
is precise equality so far ; and of course they are equal in sena- 
tors, each having two. Thus in the control of the government 
the two states are equals precisely. But how are they in the 20 
number of their white people ? Maine has 581,813, while South 
Carolina has 274,567 ; Maine has twice as many as South Caro- 
lina, and 32,679 over. Thus, each white man in South Carolina 
is more than the double of any man in Maine. This is all be- 
cause South Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 25 
slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage 
over the white man in every other free state as well as in Maine. 
He is more than the double of any one of us in this crowd. 
The same advantage, but not to the same extent, is held by 
all the citizens of the slave states over those of the free ; and 30 
it is an absolute truth, without an exception, that there is no 
voter in any slave state, but who has more legal power in the 
government than any voter in any free state. There is no in- 
stance of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us 



24 ■ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the whole chapter through. This principle, in the aggregate, 
gives the slave states in the present Congress twenty additional 
representatives, being seven more than the whole majority by 
which they passed the Nebraska Bill. 
5 Now all this is manifestly unfair ; yet I do not mention it to 
complain of it, in so far as it is already settled. It is in the 
Constitution, and I do not for that cause, or any other cause, 
propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the Constitution. I 
stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly. 

10 But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other 
people to say whether new partners are to be bred up and 
brought into the firm, on the same degrading terms against me, 
I respectfully demur. I insist that whether I shall be a whole 
man, or only the half of one, in comparison with others, is a 

15 question in which I am somewhat concerned, and one which no 
other man can have a sacred right of deciding for me. If I am 
wrong in this — if it really be a sacred right of self-government 
in the man who shall go to Nebraska to decide whether he will 
be the equal of me or the double of me, then, after he shall 

20 have exercised that right, and thereby shall have reduced me to 
a still smaller fraction of a man than I already am, I should 
like for some gentleman, deeply skilled in the mysteries of sacred 
rights, to provide himself with a microscope, and peep about, 
and find out, if he can, what has become of my sacred rights. 

25 They will surely be too small for detection with the naked eye. 
Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty 
of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own, 
that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liber- 
ties and institutions. And if they shall think, as I do, that the 

30 extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all other 
causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit the question, 
and with it the fate of their country, to a mere handful of men 
bent only on self-interest. If this question of slavery extension 
were an insignificant one — one having no power to do harm — 



"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 25 

it might be shuffled aside in this way ; but being, as it is, the 
great behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the nation 
be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the liands of such feeble 
keepers ? 

I have done with this mighty argument of self-government. 5 
Go, sacred thing ! Go in peace. ... 



AFTER THE DEFEAT OF 1856 

(Close of address at a Republican banquet in Chicago, 
December 10, 1856) 

. . . Let every one who really believes, and is resolved, that 
free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can con- 
scientiously declare that in the past contest he has done only 
what he thought best — let every such one have charity to 10 
believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let by- 
gones be bygones ; let past differences as nothing be ; and 
with steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good 
old '' central ideas " of the republic. We can do it. The human 
heart is with us ; God is with us. We shall again be able- not 1 5 
to declare that '' all states as states are equal," nor yet that 
" all citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew the broader, 
better declaration, including both these and much more, that 
" all men are created equal." 



''A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 

(Extracts from speech made in Springfield, Illinois, 
June 16, 1858) 

Mr. President and Gentleme?! of the Convention : If we could 20 
first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could 
better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far 
into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agita- 
tion. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not 
only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, 
it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
5 '' A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not 
expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either 

lo the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that 
it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will 
push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, 
old as well as new. North as well as South. 

15 Have we no tendency to the latter condition ? 

Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now 
almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery, so to 
speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred 
Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the 

20 machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted ; but also let 

him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, 

or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and 

concert of action among its chief architects, from the beginning. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more 

25 than half the states by state constitutions, , and from most of 
the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days 
later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that 
congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory 
to slavery, and was the first point gained. 

30 But, so far, Congress only had acted ; and an indorsement 
by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the 
point already gained and give chance for more. 

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had' been pro- 
vided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of 



"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 2J 

" squatter sovereignty," otherwise called " sacred right of self- 
government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the 
only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this 
attempted use of it as to amount to just this : That if any one 
man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed 5 
to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska 
Bill itself, in the language which follows : '' It being the true 
intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any 
territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom ; but to leave 
the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their 10 
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the 
Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar 
of loose declamation in favor of " squatter sovereignty " and 
" sacred right of self-government." " But," said opposition 
members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare 15 
that the people of the territory may exclude slavery." " Not 
we," said the friends of the measure ; and down they voted 
the amendment. 

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a 
law case involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason 20 
of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free 
state and then into a territory covered by the congressional 
prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, 
was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the 
district of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were 25 
brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The 
negro's name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the 
decision finally made in the case. Before the then next presi- 
dential election, the law case came to and was argued in the 
Supreme Court of the United States ; but the decision of it 30 
was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, 
Senator Trumbull, ' on the floor of the Senate, requested the 
leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion 
whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

slavery from their limits ; and the latter answered : " That is a 
question for the Supreme Court." 

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the in- 
dorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point 
5 gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popu- 
lar majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, 
perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The 
outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively 
as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and author- 

lo ity of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again ; did 
not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The 
presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the 
court ; but the incoming President in his inaugural address fer- 
vently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, 

15 whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. 
The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occa- 
sion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott 
decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The 
new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman 

20 letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to 
express his astonishment that any different view had ever 
been entertained ! 

At length a squabble springs up between the President and 
the author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, 

25 whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any 
just sense, made by the people of Kansas ; and in that quarrel 
the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, 
and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted 
up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not 

30 whether slavery be voted down or voted up to be intended by 
him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would 
impress upon the public mind — the principle for which he 
declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the 
end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any 



"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 29 

parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the 
only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the 
Dred Scott decision " squatter sovereignty " squatted out of 
existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding, — like the 
mold at the foundry, served through one blast and fell back 5 
into loose sand, — helped to carry an election, and then was 
kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Repub- 
licans against the Lecompton constitution involves nothing of 
the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a 
point — the right of a people to make their own constitution — 10 
upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection 
with Senator Douglas's " care not " policy, constitute the piece 
of machinery in its present state of advancement. This was the 
third point gained. The working points of that machinery are : 1 5 

(i) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and 
no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any state, 
in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the 
United States. This point is made in order to deprive the 
negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision 20 
of the United States Constitution which declares that " the 
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States." 

(2) That, '' subject to the Constitution of the United States," 
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery 25 
from any United States territory. This point is made in order 
that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, with- 
out danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the 
chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. 

(3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a 30 
free state makes him free as against the holder, the United 
States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by 
the courts of any slave state the negro may be forced into by 
the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately. 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the 
people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion 
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred 
Scott in the free state of Illinois, every other master may law- 
5 fully do with any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois 
or in any other free state. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the 
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold 
public opinion, at least Northern publio opinion, not to care 

lo whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly 
where we now are, and partially, also, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and 
run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. 
Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than 

15 they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be 
left " perfectly free," " subject only to the Constitution." What 
the Constitution had to do with it outsiders could not then see. 
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred 
Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect 

20 freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was 
the amendment expressly declaring the right of the people 
voted down ? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would 
have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was 
the court decision held up ? Why even a senator's individual 

25 opinion withheld till after the presidential election ? Plainly 
enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged the 
" perfectly free " argument upon which the election was to be 
carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the in- 
dorsement ? Why the delay of a reargument ? Why the incom- 

30 ing President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision.? 
These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a 
spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded 
that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after- 
indorsement of the decision by the President and others ? 



EQUALITY OF WHITE AND BLACK RACES 31 

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations 
are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed 
timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten 
out at different times and places and by different workmen, — 
Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, — and we 5 
see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make 
the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises ex- 
actly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different 
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece 
too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a 10 
single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly 
fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case 
we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin 
and Roger and James all understood one another from the be- 
ginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn 15 
up before the first blow was struck. . . . 



EQUALITY OF WHITE AND BLACK RACES 

(Extract from first debate between Lincoln and Douglas, Ottawa, 
Illinois, August 21, 1858) 

... I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to inter- 
fere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. 
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination 
to do so, I have no purpose to introduce political and social 20 
equality between the white and the black races. There is a 
physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, 
will probably forever forbid their living together upon the foot- 
ing of perfect equality ; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity 
that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am 25 
in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior posi- 
tion. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, 
notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the 
Declaration of Independence — the right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled 
to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is 
5 not my equal in many respects — certainly not in color, per- 
haps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right 
to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his 
own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, 
and the equal of every living man. . . . 



REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES 
COMPARED 

(Extract from sixth joint debate between Lincoln and Douglas, 
Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 1858) 

o ... We have in this nation the element of domestic slavery. 
It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. 
It is the opinion of all the great men who have expressed an 
opinion upon it, that it is a dangerous element. We keep up a 
controversy in regard to it. That controversy necessarily springs 

5 from difference of opinion, and if we can learn exactly — can 
reduce to the lowest elements — what that difference of opinion 
is, we perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the differ- 
ent systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that 
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, 

o reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference be- 
tween the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do 
not think it wrong. The Republican party think it wrong — we 
think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think it 
is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the states 

5 where it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tendency, to 
say the least, affects the existence of the whole nation. Because 
we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal 



REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES 33 

with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in 
so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal 
with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of 
an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of 
it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satis- 5 
factory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown about 
it. I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence in the 
nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right 
at all to disturb it in the states where it exists, and we profess 
that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the 10 
right to do it. We go further than that : we don't propose to 
disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would 
permit us. We think the Constitution would permit us to dis- 
turb it in the District of Columbia. Still we do not propose to 
do that, unless it should be in terms which I don't suppose the 15 
nation is very likely soon to agree to — the terms of making the 
emancipation gradual and compensating the unwilling owners. 
Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we restrain 
ourselves in reference to the actual existence of the institution 
and the difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil 20 
so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that 
shall restrict it to its present limits. We don't suppose that in 
doing this we violate anything due to the actual presence of 
the institution, or anything due to the constitutional guaranties 
thrown around it. 25 

We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon 
which I ought perhaps to address you a few words. We do not 
propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by 
the court, we, as a mob, will decide him to be free. We do not 
propose that, when any other one, or one thousand, shall be de- 30 
cided by that court to be slaves, we will in any violent way dis- 
turb the rights of property thus settled ; but we nevertheless do 
oppose that decision as a political rule, which shall be binding 
on the voter to vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which shall 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be binding on the members of Congress or the President to 
favor no measure that does not actually concur with the prin- 
ciples of that decision. We do not propose to be bound by it 
as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays the foun- 
5 dation not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we con- 
sider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil 
into the states themselves. We propose so resisting it as to 
have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established 
upon this subject. 

lo I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe 
that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have men- 
tioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought 
to leave us. While, on the other hand, if there be any man in 
the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity spring- 

15 ing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitu- 
tional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in disregard of 
these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his 
place somewhere else ; for we have a due regard, so far as we 
are capable o.f understanding them, for all these things. This, 

20 gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of our 
principles in all their enormity. 

I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country con- 
trary to me — a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, 
and therefore it goes for the policy that does not propose deal- 

25 ing with it as a wrong. That policy is the Democratic policy, and 
that sentiment is the Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt 
in the mind of any one of this vast audience that this is really 
the central idea of the Democratic party, in relation to this sub- 
ject, I ask him to bear with me while I state a few things tend- 

30 ing, as I think, to prove that proposition. In the first place, the 
leading man — I think I may do my friend Judge Douglas the 
honor of calling him such — advocating the present Democratic 
policy never himself says it is wrong. He has the high distinc- 
tion, so far as I know, of never having said slavery is either 



REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES 35 

right or wrong. Almost everybody else says one or the other, 
but the judge never does. If there be a man in the Democratic 
party who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I sug- 
gest to him in the first place that his leader don't talk as he does, 
for he never says that it is wrong. In the second place, I sug- 5 
gest to him that if he will examine the policy proposed to be 
carried forward, he will find that he carefully excludes the idea 
that there is anything wrong in it. If you will examine the argu- 
ments that are made on it, you will find that every one carefully 
excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in slavery. Per- 10 
haps that Democrat who says he is as much opposed to slavery 
as I am, will tell me that I am wrong about this. I wish him to 
examine his own course in regard to this matter a moment, and 
then see if his opinion will not be changed a little. You say it 
is wrong; but don't you constantly object to anybody else say- 15 
ing so ? Do you not constantly argue that this is not the right 
place to oppose it ? You say it must not be opposed in the free 
states, because slavery is not there ; it must not be opposed in 
the slave states, because it is there ; it must not be opposed in 
politics, because that will make a fuss ; it must not be opposed 20 
in the pulpit, because it is not religion. Then where is the place 
to oppose it ? There is no suitable place to oppose it. There is 
no plan in the country to oppose this evil overspreading the con- 
tinent, which you say yourself is coming. Frank Blair and Gratz 
Brown tried to get up a system of gradual emancipation in Mis- 25 
souri, had an election in August, and got beat ; and you, Mr. 
Democrat, threw up your hat and hallooed, " Hurrah for 
Democracy ! " 

So I say again, that in regard to the arguments that are 
made, when Judge Douglas says he '' don't care whether slav- 30 
ery is voted up or voted down," whether he means that as an 
individual expression of sentiment, or only as a sort of statement 
of his views on national policy, it is alike true to say that he can 
thus argue logically if he don't see anything wrong in it ; but he 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He 
cannot say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted 
down. When Judge Douglas says that whoever or whatever 
community wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is 
5 perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution ; but 
if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that any- 
body has a right to do wrong. When he says that slave prop- 
erty and horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go 
into the territories, upon the principles of equality, he is reason- 

lo ing truly if there is no difference between them as property; 
but if the one is property, held rightfully, and the other is wrong, 
then there is no equality between the right and wrong ; so that, 
turn it in any way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the 
Democratic policy, and in that policy itself, there is a careful, 

15 studied exclusion of the idea that there is anything wrong in 
slavery. Let us understand this. I am not, just here, trying 
to prove that we are right and they are wrong. I have been 
stating where we and they stand, and trying to show what is 
the real difference between us ; and I now say that whenever 

20 we can get the question distinctly stated, — - can get all these men 
who believe that slavery is in some of these respects wrong, to 
stand and act with us in treating it as a wrong, — then, and not 
till then, I think, will we in some way come to an end of this 
slavery agitation. 



LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 37 

LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

(Written for campaign purposes) 

Springfield, December 20, 1859 
J. W. Fell, Esq. 

My dear Sir . 

Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not 

much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of 

me. If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and 

not to go beyond the material. If it were thought necessary to 

incorporate anything from any of my speeches, I suppose there 5 

would be no objection. Of course it must not appear to have 

been written by myself. 

Yours very truly 

A. Lincoln 

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. 
My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished 
families — second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, 10 
who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of 
Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in 
Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham 
Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Ken- 
tucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed 1 5 
by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was labor- 
ing to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were 
Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. 
An effort to identify them with the New England family of the 
same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of 20 
Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, 
Solomon, Abraham, and the like. 

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of 
age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed 
from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in 25 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the 
state came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many 
bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew 
up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification 
5 was ever required of a teacher beyond " readin', writin', and 
cipherin' " to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to un- 
derstand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he 
was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to 
excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age 

lo I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and 
cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to 
school since. The little advance I now have upon this store 
of education, I have picked up from time to time under the 
pressure of necessity. 

15 I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was 
twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. 
Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in 
Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in 
a store. Then came the Black Hawk War ; and I was elected 

20 a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure ■ 
than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, 
ran for the legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten — 
the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next 
and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the 

25 legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legis- 
lative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield 
to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House 
of Congress. Was not a candidate for reelection. From 1849 ^^ 
1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever 

30 before. Always a Whig in politics ; and generally on the Whig 
electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing inter- 
est in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty 
well known. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 39 

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may 

be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly ; lean in flesh, 

weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds ; dark 

complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other 

marks or brands recollected. 

Yours truly 

, A. Lincoln 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 

(Address at Cooper Union, New York, February 27, i860) 

Mr. President and Felhnv Citizens of New York : The facts 
with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar ; 
nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of 
them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode 
of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations 10 
following that presentation. In his speech last autumn at 
Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York Tif?ies, Senator 
Douglas said : 

Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we 
live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we 15 
do now. 

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. 
I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed start- 
ing-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing 
of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves 20 
the inquiry : What was the understanding those fathers had of 
th6 question mentioned .^ 

What is the frame of government under which we live ? The 
answer must be, '' The Constitution of the United States." 
That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and 25 
under which the present government first went into operation, 
and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of 
which were framed in 1789. 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution ? I sup- 
pose the " thirty-nine " who signed the original instrument may 
be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present 
government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, 
5 and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opin- 
ion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their 
names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, 
need not now be repeated. 

1 take these " thirty-nine," for the present, as being '' our 

lo fathers who framed the government under which we live." 

What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers 

understood " just as well, and even better, than we do now " ? 

It is this : Does the proper division of local from federal 

authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our federal 

1 5 government to control as to slavery in our federal territories ? 
Upon this. Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Re- 
publicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an 
issue ; and this issue — this question — is precisely what the 
text declares our fathers understood '' better than we." Let us 

20 now inquire whether the " thirty-nine," or any of them, ever 
acted upon this question ; and if they did, how they acted 
upon it — how they expressed that better understanding. In 
1784, three years before the Constitution, the United States 
then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the 

25 Congress of the Confederation had before them the ques- 
tion of prohibiting slavery in that territory ; * and four of the 
" thirty-nine " who afterward framed the Constitution were in 
that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger 
Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the 

30 prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line 
dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly 

* The bill was reported by Thomas Jefferson. It prohibited slavery 
after 1800 above the parallel of 31° north latitude. It failed to pass by 
one vote. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 41 

forbade the federal government to control as to slavery in fed- 
eral territory. The other of the four, James McHenry, voted 
against the prohibition, showing that for some cause he thought 
it improper to vote for it. 

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the conven- 5 
tion was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern 
Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, 
the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again 
came before the Congress of the Confederation ; and two more 
of the '' thirty-nine " who afterward signed the Constitution were 10 
in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William 
Blount and William Few ; and they both voted for the prohibi- 
tion — thus showing that in their understanding no line dividing 
local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade 
the federal government to control as to slavery in federal terri- 15 
tory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what 
is now well known as the Ordinance of '87. 

The question of federal control of slavery in the territories 
seems not to have been directly before the convention which 
framed the original Constitution ; and hence it is not recorded 20 
that the " thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that 
instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question. 

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Consti- 
tution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, in- 
cluding the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. 25 
The bill for this act was reported by one of the '' thirty-nine " 
— Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Rep- 
resentatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages 
without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches 
without ayes and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous pas- 30 
sage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine 
fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John 
Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, 
Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, 
Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, 
and James Madison. 

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local 
5 from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, prop- 
erly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal terri- 
tory ; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath 
to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to 
oppose the prohibition. 

lo Again, George Washington, another of the '' thirty-nine," was 
then President of the United States, and as such approved and 
signed the bill, thus completing its validity as a law, and thus 
showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from 
federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the 

15 federal government to control as to slavery in federal territory. 

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, 

North Carolina ceded to the federal government the country 

now constituting the state of Tennessee ; and a few years later 

Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the states of Missis- 

20 sippi and Alabama.* In both deeds of cession it was made a 
condition by the ceding states that the federal government 
should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, 
slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these 
circumstances. Congress, on taking charge of these countries, 

25 did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did 
interfere with it — take control of it — even there, to a certain 
extent. In 1798 Congress organized the territory of Mississippi. 
In the act of organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves 
into the territory from any place without the United States, by 

30 fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed 
both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that 
Congress were three of the " thirty-nine " who framed the 

* The cession by North CaroHna was accepted by Congress in 1790 ; 
that by Georgia in 1798. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 43 

original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read, 
and Abraham Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. Cer- 
tainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record 
if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal 
authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the 5 
federal government to control as to slavery in federal territory. 

In 1803 the federal government purchased the Louisiana 
country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain 
of our own states ; but this Louisiana country was acquired 
from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress gave a territorial 10 
organization to that part of it which now constitutes the state 
of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old 
and comparatively large city. There were other considerable 
towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thor- 
oughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the 15 
Territorial Act, prohibit slavery ; but they did interfere with it 
— take control of it — in a more marked and extensive way 
than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the 
provision therein made in relation to slaves was : 

I St. That no slave should be imported into the territory from 20 
foreign parts. 

2d. That no slave should be carried into it who had been 
imported into the United States since the first day of May, 
1798. 

3d. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the 25 
owner, and for his own use as a settler ; the penalty in all the 
cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to 
the 'slave. 

This act 'also was passed without ayes or nays. In the Con- 
gress which passed it there were two of the " thirty-nine." They 30 
were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in 
the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. 
They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their 
opposition to it if, in their understanding, it violated either 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any 
provision of the Constitution. 

In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. Many 
votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Con- 
5 gress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two 
of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus King and Charles Pinckney — 
were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for 
slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. 
Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and 

10 against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his 
understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, 
nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress pro- 
hibiting slavery in federal territory ; while Mr. Pinckney, by 
his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some suf- 

15 ficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case. 

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the " thirty- 
nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have 
been able to discover. 

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four in 

20 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 
1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of them. But 
this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William 
Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham 
Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the " thirty- 

25 nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question which, 
by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leav- 
ing sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way. 

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine 
fathers " who framed the government under which we live," 

30 who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal 
oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they 
" understood just as well, and even better, than we do now " ; 
and twenty-one of them — a clear majority of the whole " thirty- 
nine " — so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 45 

political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understand- 
ing, any proper division between local and federal authority, or 
anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and 
sworn to support, forbade the federal government to control 
as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one 5 
acted ; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions 
under such responsibility speak still louder. 

Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional prohibi- 
tion of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in 
which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they 10 
so voted is not known. They may have done so because they 
thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or 
some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the 
way ; or they may, without any such question, have voted 
against the prohibition on what appeared to them to be suffi- 15 
cient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support 
the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he under- 
stands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient 
he may think it ; but one may and ought to vote against a 
measure which he deems constitutional if, at the same time, he 20 
deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down 
even the two who voted against the prohibition as having done so 
because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from 
federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the 
federal government to control as to slavery in federal territory, 25 

The remaining sixteen of the " thirty-nine," so far as I have 
discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the 
direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal terri- 
tories. But there is much reason to believe that their understand- 
ing upon that question would not have appeared different from 30 
that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all. 

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have pur- 
posely omitted whatever understanding may have been mani- 
fested by any person, however distinguished, other than the 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution ; and, 
for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understand- 
ing may have been manifested by any of the " thirty-nine " even 
on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we 
5 should look into their acts and declarations on those other 
phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy 
of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct 
question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the 
sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted 

10 just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were sev- 
eral of the most noted antislavery men of those times, — as 
Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, — 
while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, 
unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina. 

15 The sum of the whole is that of Qur thirty-nine fathers who 
framed the original Constitution, twenty-one — a clear majority 
of the whole — certainly understood that no proper division of 
local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, 
forbade the federal government to control slavery in the federal 

20 territories ; while all the rest had probably the same under- 
standing. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our 
fathers who framed the original Constitution ; and the text 
affirms that they understood the question '' better than we." 
But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of 

25 the question manifested by the framers of the original Consti- 
tution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was pro- 
vided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the 
present frame of " the government under which we live " 
consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles 

30 framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that fed- 
eral control of slavery in federal territories violates the Con- 
stitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus 
violates ; and, as I understand, they all fix upon provisions in 
these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 47 

The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves 
upon the Fifth Amendment, which provides that no person shall 
be deprived of " life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law " ; while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant 
themselves upon the Tenth Amendment, providing that ^'the pow- 5 
ers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution " 
" are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by 
the first Congress which sat under the Constitution — the iden- 
tical Congress which passed the act, already mentioned, enforc- 10 
ing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. 
Not only w^as it the same Congress, but they were the identical, 
same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same 
time within the session, had under consideration, and in prog- 
ress toward maturity, these constitutional amendments, and this 1 5 
act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. 
The constitutional amendments were introduced before, and 
passed after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87 ; so that, 
during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the ordinance, 
the constitutional amendments were also pending. 20 

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of 
the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were 
preeminently our fathers who framed, that part of '' the govern- 
ment under which we live " which is now claimed as forbidding 
the federal government to control slavery in the federal territories. 25 

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm 
that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, 
and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely incon- 
sistent with each other } And does not such affirmation become 
impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, 3° 
from the same mouth, that those who did the two things alleged 
to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were incon- 
sistent better than we — better than he who affirms that they 
are inconsistent ? 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the 
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Con- 
gress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do 
certainly include those who may be fairly called "" our fathers 
5 who framed the government under which we live. " And so 
assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, 
in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper 
division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Con- 
stitution, forbade the federal government to control as to slavery 

lo in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one 
to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, 
prior to the beginning of the present century ( and I might 
almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the pres- 
ent century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper 

15 division of local from federal authority, or any part of the 
Constitution, forbade the federal government to control as to 
slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare 
I give not only " our fathers who framed the government under 
which we live, " but with them all other living men within the 

20 century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and 
they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man 
agreeing with them. 

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunder- 
stood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly 

25 in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all 
the lights of current experience — to reject all progress, all im- 
provement. What I do say is that if we would supplant the 
opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so 
upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even 

30 their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand ; 
and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they 
understood the question better than we. 

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division 
of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 49 

forbids the federal government to control as to slavery in the 
federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his posi- 
tion by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. 
But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to 
history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that 5 
" our fathers who framed the government under which we live " 
were of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood and 
deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any 
man at this day sincerely believes " our fathers who framed the 
government under which we live " used and applied principles, 10 
in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that 
a proper division of local from federal authority, or some part 
of the Constitution, forbids the federal government to control 
as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. 
But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of 15 
declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles 
better than they did themselves ; and especially should he not 
shirk that responsibility by asserting that they '' understood the 
question just as well, and even better, than we do now." 

But enough ! Let all who believe that '' our fathers who 20 
framed the government under which we live understood this 
question just as well, and even better, than we do now, " speak 
as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Re- 
publicans ask — all Republicans desire — in relation to slavery. 
As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil 25 
not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only be- 
cause of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that 
toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties 
those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, 
maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far 30 
as I know or believe, they will be content. 

And now, if they would listen, — as I suppose they will not, 
— I would address a few words to the Southern people. 

I would say to them : You consider yourselves a reasonable 



50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and a just people ; and I consider that in the general qualities 
of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. 
Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to de- 
nounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. 
5 You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing 
like it to " Black Republicans." In all your contentions with 
one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation 
of " Black Republicanism " as the first thing to be attended to. 
Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable 

lo prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted 
or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not be prevailed 
upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, 
or even to yourselves ? Bring forward your charges and specifica- 
tions, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. 

1 5 You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue ; 
and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof ; 
and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your 
section — gets no votes in your section. The fact is substan- 
tially true ; but does it prove the issue ? If it does, then in case 

20 we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in 
your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You can- 
not escape this conclusion ; and yet, are you willing to abide by 
it ? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased 
to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very 

25 year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, 
that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get 
no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of 
ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily 
yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some 

30 wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong 
principle or practice, the fault is ours ; but this brings you to 
where you ought to have started — to a discussion of the right 
or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, 
would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 51 

other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, 
and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, 
on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would 
wrong your section ; and so meet us as if it were possible that 
something may be said on our side. Do you accept the chal- 5 
lenge ? No ! Then you really believe that the principle which 
" our fathers who framed the government under which we live " 
thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and 
again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to 
demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration. 10 

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against 
sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. 
Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he 
had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an 
act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the North- 1 5 
western Territory, which act embodied the policy of the gov- 
ernment upon that subject up to and at the very moment he 
penned that warning ; and about one year after he penned it, 
he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise 
measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we 20 
should at some time have a confederacy of free states. 

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since 
arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your 
hands against us, or in our hands against you ? Could Washing- 
ton himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism 25 
upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it ? 
We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to 
you, together with his example pointing to the right application 
of it. * 

* The passage in Washington's Farewell Address which most ex- 
plicitly warns against sectionalism is as follows : 

" It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the im- 
mense value of your National Union to your collective and individual 
happiness, that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable 
attachment to it ; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

But you say you are conservative — eminently conservative 
— while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the 
sort. What is conservatism ? Is it not adherence to the old and 
tried, against the new and untried ? We stick to, contend for, 
5 the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was 
adopted by *' our fathers who framed the government under 
which we live " ; while you with one accord reject, and scout, 
and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting some- 
thing new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what 

lo that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions 
and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing 
the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the 
foreign slave trade ; some for a congressional slave code for the 
territories ; some for Congress forbidding the territories to pro- 

1 5 hibit slavery within their limits ; some for maintaining slavery 
in the territories through the judiciary ; some for the *' gur-reat 
pur-rinciple " that " if one man would enslave another, no third 
man should object, " fantastically called " popular sovereignty " ; 
but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition 

20 of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of 
" our fathers who framed the government under which we live." 
Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an 
advocate in the century within which our government originated. 
Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for your- 

25 selves, and your charge of destructiveness against us, are based 
on the most clear and stable foundations. 

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more 
prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that 
it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was 

the palladium of your political safety and prosperity ; watching for its 
preservation with jealous anxiety ; and indignantly frowning upon the 
first dawning of any attempt to alienate any portion of our country from 
the rest, or to. enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the 
various parts. " 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 53 

not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. 
We resisted, and still resist, your innovation ; and thence comes 
the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that 
question reduced to its former proportions ? Go back to that old 
policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. 5 
If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the pre- 
cepts and policy of the old times. 

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. 
We deny it ; and what is your proof ? Harpers Ferry ! John 
Brown ! ! John Brown was no Republican ; and you have failed 10 
to implicate a single Republican in his Harpers Ferry enter- 
prise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you 
know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are 
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. 
If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and 1 5 
especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and 
failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting 
in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply mali- 
cious slander. 

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or 20 
encouraged the Harpers Ferry affair, but still insist that our 
doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We 
do not believe it. We know we hold no doctrine, and make no 
declaration, which were not held to and made by '' our fathers 
who framed the government under which we live." You never 25 
dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, 
some important state elections were near at hand, and you were 
in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon 
us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The 
elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. 30 
Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your 
charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to 
cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declara- 
tions are accompanied with a continual protest against any 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your 
slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, 
we do, in common with ''our fathers who framed the government 
under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong ; 
5 but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we 
say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican 
party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but 
for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your 
political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the 

lo other with sympathy with Black Republicanism ; and then, to 
give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply 
be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves. 

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were 
before the Republican party was organized. What induced the 

15 Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at 
least three times as many lives were lost as at Harpers Ferry ? * 
You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion 
that Southampton was " got up by Black Republicanism." In 
the present state of things in the United States, I do not think 

20 a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible. 
The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The 
slaves have no means of rapid communication ; nor can incen- 
diary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive mate- 
rials are everywhere in parcels ; but there neither are, nor can 

25 be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains. 

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves 
for their masters and mistresses ; and a part of it, at least, 
is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and 

* In August, 1 83 1, at Southampton, Va., Nat Turner, a negro, led an 
insurrection of his fellow slaves in the course of which more than sixty 
white people, most of them women and children, were massacred. The 
abolitionists were charged with instigating the rising, but their histor- 
ians dtny the allegation, and no proof has come to light of their con- 
nection with the crime. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 55 

communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, 
to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge 
it. This is the rule ; and the slave revolution in Haiti was not 
an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circum- 
stances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not 5 
connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only 
about twenty were admitted to the secret ; and yet one of them, 
in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, 
and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poison- 
ings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in 10 
the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will con- 
tinue to occur as the natural results of slavery ; but no general 
insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for 
a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an 
event, will be alike disappointed. 15 

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, 
" It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation 
and deportation peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the 
evil will wear off insensibly ; and their places be, pari passu, 
filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to 20 
force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect 
held up." 

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power 
of emancipation is in the federal government. He spoke of 
Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the 25 
slaveholding states only. The federal government, however, as 
we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the 
institution — the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall 
never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery. 

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insur- 3° 
rection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt 
among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In 
fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, 
saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its 



56 ABRAHAM LliNCOLN 

philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in 
history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An en- 
thusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies 
himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures 
5 the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. 
Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon,* and John Brown's attempt 
at Harpers Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. 
The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, 
and on New England in the other, does not disprove the same- 
lo ness of the two things. 

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use 
of John Brown, Helper's book,t and the like, break up the 

* Felice Orsini was chief of a band of desperadoes that attempted the 
life of Napoleon III on January 14, 1858. The plot had been hatched 
in London and many Frenchmen bitterly charged the British with 
complicity in the crime. 

t Hinton R. Helper, a North Carolinian, wrote, in 1857, " The Im- 
pending Crisis of the South : How to Meet It," a book intended to 
show that slavery was inimical to the interests of the nonslavehold- 
ing Southern whites. Of this work, J. F. Rhodes says, in his " History 
of the United States from 1850 " : 

'' Although the writer's manner was highly emotional, sincerity flowed 
from his unpracticed pen. The facts were irr the main correct ;' the 
arguments based on them, in spite of being disfigured by abuse of the 
slaveholders, and weakened by threats, of violent action in a certain 
contingency, were unanswerable. . . . The burden of Helper's argu- 
ment was that the abolition of slavery would improve the material in- 
terests of the South by fostering manufactures and commerce, thus 
greatly increasing the value of land, the only property of the poor whites, 
and giving them a larger market for their products. The country and 
the cities would grow ; there would be schools, as at the North, for the 
education of their children, and their rise in the social scale would be 
marked. . . . Had the poor whites been able to read and comprehend 
such an argument, slavery would have been doomed to destruction, for 
certainly seven voters out of ten in the slave states were nonslave- 
holding whites. It was this consideration that made Southern congress- 
men so furious, for to retain their power they must continue to hoodwink 
their poorer neighbors. 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 57 

Republican organization ? Human action can be modified to 
some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a 
judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast 
at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that 
judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the 5 
political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely 
scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order 
in the face of your heaviest fire ; but if you could, how much 
would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out 
of the peaceful channel of the ballot box into some other 10 
channel ? What would that other channel probably be ? Would 
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the 
operation ? 

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a 
denial of your constitutional rights. 1 5 

That has a somewhat reckless sound ; but it would be palli- 
ated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force 
of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly written down 
in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing. 

When you make these declarations you have a specific and 20 
well-understood allusion to an assumed constitutional right of 
yours to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold 
them there as property. But no such right is specifically written 
in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any 

The book grew in favor in the North, and in 1859, it was published 
for propagandist purposes in a cheap edition, which received the writ- 
ten approval of a number of Republican congressmen, including John 
Sherman, the candidate of his party for Speaker. Although Sherman 
explained that he had signed the indorsement by proxy in a moment of 
thoughtlessness, he could not dissipate the distrust of moderate Re- 
publicans whose votes were necessary for his election. A long contest 
ensued, which Sherman ended by retiring in favor of William Penning- 
ton of New Jersey, who was thought to be more conservative. Mr. 
Pennington was promptly elected. 

In 1861 Lincoln appointed Helper consul to Buenos Aires. 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any 
existence in the Constitution, even by implication. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy 
the government, unless you be allowed to construe and force 
5 the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between 
you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. 

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say 
the Supreme Court has decided the disputed constitutional 
question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's 

10 distinction between dictum and decision, the court has decided 
the question for you in a sort of way. The court has substan- 
tially said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into the 
federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When 
I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was 

15 made in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and 
they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for 
making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters 
disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was 
mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the state- 

20 ment in the opinion that " the right of property in a slave is 
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." 

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of 
property in a slave is not " distinctly and expressly affirmed " 
in it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial 

25 opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution ; 
but they pledge their veracity that it is " distinctly and ex- 
pressly " affirmed there — "distinctly," that is, not mingled 
with anything else — " expressly," that is, in words meaning 
just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no 

30 other meaning. 

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right 
is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to 
others to show that neither the word '' slave " nor '' slavery " 
is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word '' property " 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 59 

even, in any connection with language alluding to the things 
slave, or slavery ; and that wherever in that instrument the slave 
is alluded to, he is called a '' person " ; and wherever his master's 
legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as 
" service or labor which may be due " ^ — as a debt payable in 5 
service or labor. Also it would be open to show, by contempo- 
raneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, 
instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to ex- 
clude from the Constitution the idea that there could be prop- 
erty in man. 10 

To show all this is easy and certain. 

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to 
their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw 
the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based 
upon it? 15 

And then it is to be remembered that " our fathers who 
framed the government under which we live " — the men who 
made the Constitution — decided this same constitutional ques- 
tion in our favor long ago : decided it without division among 
themselves when making the decision ; without division among 20 
themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so 
far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken 
statement of facts. 

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves 
justified to break up this government unless such a court decision 25 
as yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final 
rule of political action ? But you will not abide the election of a 
Republican President ! In that supposed event, you say, you will 
destroy the Union ; and then, you say, the great crime of having 
destroyed it will be upon us ! That is cool. A highwayman holds 30 
a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, " Stand and 
deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer! " 

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my money 
— was my own ; and I had a clear right to keep it ; but it was 



6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

no more my own than my vote is my own ; and the threat of death 
to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the 
Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle. 
A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable 
5 that all parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace, and in 
harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to 
have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing 
through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern 
people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider 

lo their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of 
our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and 
by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us 
determine, if we can, what will satisfy them. 

Will they be satisfied if the territories be unconditionally sur- 

15 rendered to them ? We know they will not. In all their present 
complaints against us, the territories are scarcely mentioned. 
Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy 
them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and 
insurrections ? We know it will not. We so know, because we 

20 know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrec- 
tions ; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from 
the charge and the denunciation. 

The question recurs. What will satisfy them ? Simply this : 
we must not only let them alone, but we must somehow con- 

25 vince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by ex- 
perience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince 
them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no 
success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly 
protested our purpose to let them alone ; but this has had no 

30 tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them 
is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any 
attempt to disturb them. 

These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what 
will convince them ? This, and this only : cease to call slavery 



SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT 6l 

wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be 
done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence 
will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with 
them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted 
and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, 5 
whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. 
We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy 
pleasure. We must pull down our free-state constitutions. The 
whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposi- 
tion to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their 10 
troubles proceed from us. 

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in 
this way. Most of them would probably say to us, " Let us 
alone ; do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." 
But we do let them alone, — have never disturbed them, — so 15 
that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They 
will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. 

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms demanded 
the overthrow of our free-state constitutions. Yet those consti- 
tutions declare the wrong of slavery with more solemn emphasis 20 
than do all other sayings against it ; and when all these other 
sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these consti- 
tutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the de- 
mand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand 
the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for 25 
the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of 
this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally 
right and socially elevating, ttiey cannot cease to demand a full 
national recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing. 

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our 30 
conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, 
acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, 
and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot 
justly object to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong, 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlargement. 
All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right ; 
all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. 
Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise 
5 fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it 
right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full 
recognition as being right ; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can 
we yield to them ? Can we cast our votes with their view, and 
against our own ? In view of our moral, social, and political 

lo responsibilities, can we do this ? 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone 
where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising 
from its actual presence in the nation ; but can we, while our 
votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national territo- 

1 5 ries, and to overrun us here in these free states ? 

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our 
duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of 
those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously 
plied and belabored — contrivances such as groping for some 

20 middle ground between the right and the wrong ; vain as the 
search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a 
dead man ; such as a policy of " don't care " on a question 
about which all true men do care ; such as Union appeals be- 
seeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the 

25 divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to 
repentance ; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men 
to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington did. 
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusa- 
tions against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruc- 

30 tion to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us 
have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to 
the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. 



THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 63 

FAREWELL SPEECH TO HIS FRIENDS IN 
SPRINGFIELD 

(When he left them on February 1 1, 1861, to go to Washington for 
his first inauguration) 

My Friends : No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my 
feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kind- 
ness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a 
quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old 
man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I 5 
now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
with a task before me greater than that which rested upon 
Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who 
ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I 
cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain 10 
with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope 
that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I 
hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an 
affectionate farewell. 

THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 

(Extracts from first inaugural, March 4, 1861) 

... I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, 15 
and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by 
any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to 
specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, 
I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official 
and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts 20 
which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting 
to find impunity in- having them held to be unconstitutional. 

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a Pres- 
ident under our national Constitution. During that period 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in suc- 
cession, administered the executive branch of the government. 
They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with 
great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now 
5 enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of 
four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of 
the federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably 
attempted. 

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the 

10 Constitution, the Union of these states is perpetual. Perpetuity 
is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all na- 
tional governments. It is safe to assert that no government 
proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own ter- 
mination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our 

15 national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever — it 
being impossible to destroy it except by some action not pro- 
vided for in the instrument itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but 
an association of states in the nature of contract merely, can 

20 it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the 
parties who made it ? One party to a contract may violate 
it — break it, so to speak ; but does it not require all to law- 
fully rescind it ? 

Descending from these general principles, we find the prop- 

25 osition that, in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual 
confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is 
much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by 
the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and con- 
tinued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was 

30 further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen states 
expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by 
the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 
one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the 
Constitution was '' to form a more perfect Union." 



THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 65 

But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only 
of the states be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than 
before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of per- 
petuity. 

It follows from these views that no state upon its own mere 5 
motion can lawfully get out of the Union ; that resolves and 
ordinances to that effect are legally void ; and that acts of vio- 
lence, within any state or states, against the authority of the 
United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according 
to circumstances. 10 

I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the 
laws, the Union is unbroken ; and to the extent of my ability I 
shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon 
me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the 
states. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my 15 
part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my 
rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requi- 
site means, or in some authoritative manner direct the con- 
trary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only 
as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitution- 20 
ally defend and maintain itself. 

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; 
and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national 
authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, 
occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the 25 
government, and to collect the duties and imposts ; but beyond 
what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no inva- 
sion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. 
Where hostility to the United States, in any interior locality, 
shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident 30 
citizens from holding the federal offices, there will be no attempt 
to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. 
While the strict legal right may exist in the government to en- 
force the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem 
it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in 
all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people every- 
5 where shall have that sense of perfect security which is most 
favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here in- 
dicated will be followed unless current events and experience 
shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every 
case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised according 

lo to circumstances actually existing, and with a view and a hope 
of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restora- 
tion of fraternal sympathies and affections. 

That there are persons in one section or another who seek 
to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext 

15 to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny ; but if there be such, I 
need address no word to them. To those, however, who really 
love the Union may I not speak .? 

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of 
our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its 

20 hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it ? 
Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possi- 
bility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real ex- 
istence ? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater 
than all the real ones you fly from — will you risk the commis- 

25 sion of so fearful a mistake ? 

All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional 
rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, 
plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied ? I think 
not. Happily the human mind is so constituted that no party 

30 can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a 
single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Con- 
stitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of num- 
bers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written 
constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify 



THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 6/ 

revolution — certainly would if such a right were a vital one. 
But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and 
of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and 
negations, guarantees and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that 
controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law 5 
can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to 
every question which may occur in practical administration. No 
foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length 
contain, express provisions for all possible questions. Shall 
fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by state 10 
authority ? The Constitution does not expressly say. May 
Congress prohibit slavery in the territories ? The Constitution 
does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the 
territories ? The Constitution does not expressly say. 

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional con- 15 
troversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minor- 
ities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the 
government must cease. There is no other alternative ; for con- 
tinuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. 

If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, 20 
they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them ; 
for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a 
majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For in- 
stance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year 
or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of 25 
the present Union now claim to secede from it ? All who cherish 
disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper 
of doing this. 

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the states 
to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and 30 
prevent renewed secession ? 

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. 
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limita- 
tions, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of 
a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to an- 
archy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible ; the rule of a 
minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible ; 
5 so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism 
in some form is all that is left. 

I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitu- 
tional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court ; nor 
do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, 

lo upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while 
they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in 
all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. 
And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be er- 
roneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being 

15 limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be 
overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can 
better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At 
the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy 
of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole 

20 people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme 
Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between 
parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be 
their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their 
government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is 

25 there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It 
is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases prop- 
erly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others 
seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. 

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and 

30 ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and 
ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. 
The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for 
the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well en- 
forced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where 



THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 69 

the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law 
itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal 
obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, 
I think, cannot be perfectly cured ; and it would be worse in 
both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The 5 
foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ulti- 
mately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive 
slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surren- 
dered at all by the other. 

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove 10 
our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable 
wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and 
go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; 
but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They 
cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable 15 
or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, 
to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfac- 
tory after separation than before ? Can aliens make treaties 
easier than friends can make laws } Can treaties be more faith- 
fully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends ? 20 
Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always ; and when, 
after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease 
fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse 
are again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who 25 
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing 
government, they can exercise their constitutional right of 
amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or over- 
throw it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy 
and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Con- 30 
stitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amend- 
ments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people 
over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes 
prescribed in the instrument itself ; and I should, under existing 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity 
being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add 
that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it 
allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, in- 
5 stead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions 
originated by others not especially chosen for the purpose, and 
which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either 
accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the 
Constitution — which amendment, however, I have not seen — 

10 has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government 
shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, 
including that of persons held to service. To avoid miscon- 
struction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not 
to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding 

15 such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have 
no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. 

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, 
and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the 
separation of the states. The people themselves can do this 

20 also if they choose ; but the executive, as such, has nothing to 
do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, 
as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, 
to hi? successor. 

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate 

25 justice of the people ? Is there any better or equal hope in the 
world ? In our present differences is either party without faith 
of being in the right .'* If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with 
his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on 
yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail 

30 by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. 

By the frame of the government under which we live, this 

same people have wisely given their public servants but little 

power for mischief ; and have, with equal wisdom, provided 

for the return of that little to their own hands at very short 



THE PERPETUITY OF THE UNION 71 

intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no 
administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very 
seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this 
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If 5 
there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step 
which you would never take deliberately, that object will be 
frustrated by taking time ; but no good object can be frustrated 
by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old 
Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws 10 
of your own framing under it ; while the new administration 
will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If 
it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right 
side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for pre- 
cipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm 1 5 
reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, 
are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present 
difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in 
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government 20 
will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being 
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in 
heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most 
solemn one to " preserve, protect, and defend it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We 25 
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it 
must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of 
memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will 
yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely 30 
they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 



'^^ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

LINCOLN'S REPLY TO SECRETARY SEWARD'S 

OFFER TO BECOME THE HEAD OF ^E 

ADMINISTRATION 

My Dear Sir: April i, 1861 

the property and olare. h , ' "'^P^' ^"'^ P^^^^^s 

^'>^^i^Li^:i^T^^^::F'f^:;^ ^°-— . and to 

■o at the time • anrl t,i. ■ ^'^ >'°"'' ^'^''"ct approval 

ately g ve Generk st"t;7"""'r "'* '''^ °'-<^- ^ '--edi- 

ot Fort Pitken, ,„„„ u, ""' " " ""J ~". whfc ihal 

The ^r:::^:^^^^^ - --.°- on. 

tamly brings a new item within the r3e of o ^'V^°."'"S° ^^■- 
but up to that time we have beenT ""^ ^""'S" P^^ • 
instrt^ctions to ministers and the Ike a in^^'^f " '^^ 
witl^out even a suggestion that we td n r^ pol,- y"'' 

and d'r::ircS;r^^ ^^ — °^ys business to pursue 
acti've '.n •:, or' ^"''"' ""^' '° " "^^-'f' -^ "e al. the while 



15 



20 but 



ON THE RELATION OF LABOR AND CAPITAL 73 

'' Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once adopted, 
debates on it must end, and all agree and abide " ■ — ^ I remark 
that if this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of 
policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being 
changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of un- 5 
necessary debate ; still, upon points arising in its progress I wish, 
and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the cabinet. 

ON THE RELATION OF LABOR AND CAPITAL 

(Extract from annual message, December 3, 1861) 

... It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argu- 
ment should be made in favor of popular institutions ; but there 
is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most 10 
others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place 
capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the 
structure of government. It is assumed that labor is avail- 
able only in connection with capital ; that nobody labors unless 
somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces 1 5 
him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is 
best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to 
work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it 
without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally 
concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we 20 
call slaves. And, further, it is assumed that whoever is once a 
hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. 

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as 
assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed 
for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assump- 25 
tions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. 

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is 
only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor 
had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and de- 
serves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, 30 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is 
it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation 
between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error 
is in assuming that the whole labor of the community exists 
5 within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid 
labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few 
to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — 
neither work for others nor have others working for them. In 
most of the Southern states a majority of the whole people, of 

lo all colors, are neither slaves nor masters ; while in the Northern 
a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their 
families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for themselves, 
on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the 
whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on 

15 the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It 
is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle 
their own labor with capital — that is, they labor with their own 
hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them ; but this 
is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is 

20 disturbed by the existence of this mixed class. 

Again, as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, 
any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that con- 
dition for life. Many independent men eveiywhere in these 
states, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The 

25 prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, 
saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, 
then labors on his own account another while, and, at length 
hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and 
generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all — 

30 gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and im- 
provement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy 
to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty — '- none less 
inclined to take or touch ayght which they have not honestly 
earned. Let them beware [of surrendering a political power 



MESSAGE TO CONGRESS 75 

which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely 
be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, 
and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of 
liberty shall be lost. . . . 



MESSAGE TO CONGRESS RECOMMENDING 
COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION 

(March 6, 1862) 

Fellow Citizens of the Senate afid House of Representatives : 5 
I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honor- 
able bodies, which shall be substantially as follows : 

Resolved, That the United States ought to cooperate with any 
state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such 
state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state, in its discretion, to 10 
compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by 
such change of system. 

If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet 
the approval of Congress and the country, there is the end ; 
but if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance 15 
that the states and people immediately interested should be at 
once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to 
consider whether to accept or reject it. The federal govern- 
ment would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one 
of the most efficient means of self-preservation. The leaders of 20 
the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this govern- 
ment will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence 
of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave 
states north of such part will then say, " The Union for which 
we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go 25 
with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope sub- 
stantially ends the rebellion ; and the initiation of emancipation 
completely deprives them of it as to all the states initiating it. 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The point is not that all the states tolerating slavery would very 
soon, if at all, initiate emancipation ; but that while the offer is 
equally made to all, the more Northern shall, by such initiation, 
make it certain to the more Southern that in no event will the 
5 former ever join the latter in their proposed confederacy. I 
say " initiation " because, in my judgment, gradual and not 
sudden emancipation is better for all. In the mere financial or 
pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the census tables 
and treasury reports before him, can readily see for himself 

10 how very soon the current expenditures of this war would pur- 
chase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named state. Such 
a proposition on the part of the general government sets up no 
claim of a right by federal authority to interfere with slavery within 
state limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the sub- 

15 ject in each case to the state and its people immediately interested. 
It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them. 

In the annual message, last December, I thought fit to say, 
'' The Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable 
means must be employed." I said this not hastily, but deliber- 

20 ately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispen- 
sable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the 
national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it 
would at once cease. If, however, resistance continues, the war 
must also continue ; and it is impossible to foresee all the inci- 

25 dents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it. 
Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great 
efficiency, toward ending the struggle, must and will come. 

The proposition now made, though an offer only, I hope it 
may be esteemed no offense to ask whether the pecuniary con- 

30 sideration tendered would not be of more value to the states 
and private persons concerned than are the institution and 
property in it, in the present aspect of affairs ? 

While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution 
would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical 



LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY "JJ 

measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead 
to important practical results. In full view of my great respon- 
sibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the 
attention of Congress and the people to the subject. 

Abraham Lincoln 



LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY 

(August 22, 1862) 

... I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way 5 
under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can 
be restored, the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it 
was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless 
they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with 
them. . . . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the 10 
Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I 
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it ; 
and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; 
and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored 1 5 
race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union ; and 
what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help 
to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe 
what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever 
I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to 20 
correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new 
views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. . . . 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

SABBATH OBSERVANCE 

(November 15, 1862) 

The President, commander in chief of the army and navy, 
desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by 
the officers and men in the military and naval service. The im- 
portance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the 
5 sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming defer- 
ence to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due 
regard for the Divine Will, demand that Sunday labor in the 
army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity. 
The discipline and character of the national forces should not 

10 suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profana- 
tion of the day or name of the Most High. " At this time of 
public distress" — adopting the words of Washington in 1776 
— '' men may find enough to do in the service of God and 
their country without abandoning themselves to vice and im- 

15 morality." The first general order issued by the Father of his 
Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the 
spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever 
be defended. " The general hopes and trusts that every officer 
and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian 

20 soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country." 

Abraham Lincoln 
* Official : E. D. Townsend, Assistant Adjutant General 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 79 

EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 
(December i, 1862) 

. . . Among the friends of the Union there is great diver- 
sity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the 
African race amongst us. Some would perpetuate slavery; 
some would abolish it suddenly, and without compensation ; 
some would abolish it gradually, and with compensation ; some 5 
would remove the freed people from us, and some would retain 
them with us ; and there are yet other minor diversities. Be- 
cause of these diversities we waste much strength in struggles 
among ourselves. By mutual concession we should harmonize 
and act together. This would be compromise ; but it would be lo 
compromise among the friends, and not with the enemies, of the 
Union. These articles are intended to embody a plan of such 
mutual concessions. If the plan shall be adopted, it is assumed 
that emancipation will follow at least in several of the states. 

As to the first article, the main points are : first, the emanci- 1 5 
pation ; secondly, the length of time for consummating it — 
thirty-seven years ; and, thirdly, the compensation. 

The emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of 
perpetual slavery ; but the length of time should greatly miti- 
gate their dissatisfaction. The time spares both races from the 20 
evils of sudden derangement — in fact, from the necessity of 
any derangement ; while most of those whose habitual course 
of thought will be disturbed by the measure will have passed 
away before its consummation. They will never see it. Another 
class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate 25 
the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the 
now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves 
them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend 
immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are 
very great ; and it gives the inspiring assurance that their pos- 30 
terity shall be free forever. The plan leaves to each state 



8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

choosing to act under it to abolish slavery now, or at the end 
of the century, or at any intermediate time, or by degrees ex- 
tending over the whole or any part of the period ; and it obliges 
no two states to proceed alike. It also provides for compensa- 
5 tion, and generally the mode of making it. This, it would seem, 
must further mitigate the dissatisfaction of those who favor 
perpetual slavery, and especially of those who are to receive 
the compensation. Doubtless some of those who are to pay, 
and not to receive, will object. Yet the measure is both just 

10 and economical. In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is 
the destruction of property — property acquired by descent or 
by purchase, the same as any other property. It is no less true 
for having been often said, that the people of the South are not 
more responsible for the original introduction of this property 

1 5 than are the people of the North ; and when it is remembered 
how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and sugar and share the 
profits of dealing in them, it may not be quite safe to say that 
the South has been more responsible than the North for its 
continuance. If, then, for a common object this property is to 

20 be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a common charge ? 

And if, with less money, or money more easily paid, we can 

preserve the benefits of the Union by this means than we can 

by the war alone, is it not also economical to do it ? Let us 

consider it, then. Let us ascertain the sum we have expended 

25 in the war since compensated emancipation was proposed last 
March, and consider whether, if that measure had been promptly 
accepted by even some of the slave states, the same sum would 
not have done more to close the war than has been otherwise 
done. If so, the measure would save money, and in that view 

30 would be a prudent and economical measure. Certainly it is 
not so easy to pay something as it is to pay nothing ; but it is 
easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And 
it is easier to pay any sum when we are able, than it is to 
pay it before we are able. The war requires large sums, and 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 8 1 

requires them at once. The aggregate sum necessary for com- 
pensated emancipation of course would be large. But it would 
require no ready cash, nor the bonds even, any faster than the 
emancipation progresses. This might not, and probably would 
not, close before the end of the thirty-seven years. At that 5 
time we shall probably have 100,000,000 of people to share 
the burden, instead of 31,000,000 as now. And not only so, 
but the increase of our population may be expected to continue 
for a long time after that period, as rapidly as before, because 
our territory will not have become full. I do not state this in- 10 
considerately. At the same ratio of increase which we have 
maintained, on an average, from our first national census in 
1790 until that of i860, we should in 1900 have a population 
of 103,208,415. And why may we not continue that ratio far 
beyond that period ? Our abundant room — our broad national 15 
homestead — is our ample resource. Were our territory as 
limited as are the British , Isles, very certainly our population 
could not expand as stated. Instead of receiving the foreign- 
born as now, we should be compelled to send part of the 
native-born away. But such is not our condition. We have 20 
2,963,000 square miles. Europe has 3,800,000, with a popula- 
tion averaging 73-J- persons to the square mile. Why may not 
our country, at the same time, average as many } Is it less 
fertile ? Has it more waste surface, by mountains, rivers, lakes, 
deserts, or other causes ? Is it inferior to Europe in any natural 25 
advantage ? If, then, we are at some time to be as populous as 
Europe, how soon ? As to when this may be, we can judge by 
the past and the present ; as to when it will be, if ever, depends 
much on whether we maintain the Union. Several of our states 
are already above the average of Europe — 73-^ to the square 30 
mile. Massachusetts has 157; Rhode Island, 133; Connecticut, 
99 ; New York and New Jersey, each 80. Also two other great 
states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, are not far below, the former 
having 63 and the latter 59. The states already above the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



European average, except New York, have increased in as 
rapid a ratio since passing that point as ever before, while no 
one of them is equal to some other parts of our country in 
natural capacity for sustaining a dense population. 
5 Taking the nation in the aggregate, we find its population 
and ratio of increase for the several decennial periods to be as 
follows : 



1790 
1800 
1810 
1820 
1830 
1840 
1850 
i860 



3,929,827 

5,305,937 

7,239,814 

9,638,131 

12,866,020 

17,069,453 

23,191,876 

31,443,790 



35.02 
36.45 
33-13 
3349 
32.67 

35-87 
35-58 



per cent ratio of increase 



This shows an average decennial increase of 34.60 per cent 
in population through the seventy years from our first to our 
10 last census yet taken. It is seen that the ratio of increase at no 
one of these seven periods is either two per cent below or two 
per cent above the average, thus showing how inflexible, and 
consequently how reliable, the law of increase in our case is. 
Assuming that it will continue, gives the following results : 

1870 42,323,341 

1880 56,967,216 

1890 76,677,872 

1900 103,208,415 

1910 ^ 138,918,526 

1920 186,984,335 

1930 251,680,914 

15 These figures show that our country may be as populous as 
Europe now is at some point between 1920 and 1930 — say 
about 1925 — our territory, at 73-^ persons to the square mile, 
being of capacity to contain 217,186,000. 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 83 

And we will reach this, too, if we do not ourselves relinquish 
the chance by the folly and evils of disunion, or by long and 
exhausting war springing from the only great element of national 
discord among us. While it cannot be foreseen exactly how 
much one huge example of secession, breeding lesser ones in- 5 
definitely, would retard population, civilization, and prosperity, 
no one can doubt that the extent of it would be very great and 
injurious. 

The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetu- 
ate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately 10 
the wealth of the country. With these, we should pay all the 
emancipation would cost, together with our other debt, easier 
than we should pay our other debt without it. If we had allowed 
our old national debt to run at six per cent per annum, simple 
interest, from the end of our Revolutionary struggle until to- 15 
day, without paying anything on either principle or interest, 
each man of us would owe less upon that debt now than each 
man owed upon it then ; and this because our increase of men, 
through the whole period, has been greater than six per cent 
— has run faster than the interest upon the debt. Thus, time 20 
alone relieves a debtor nation, so long as its population increases 
faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its debt. 

This fact would be no excuse for delaying payment of what 
is justly due ; but it shows the great importance of time in this 
connection — the great advantage of a policy by which we shall 25 
not have to pay, until we number a hundred millions, what by 
a different policy we would have to pay now, when we number 
but thirty-one millions. In a word, it shows that a dollar will 
be much harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar for 
emancipation on the proposed plan. And then the latter will 30 
cost no blood, no precious life. It will be a saving of both. 

As to the second article, I think it would be impracticable to 
return to bondage the class of persons therein contemplated. 
Some of them doubtless, in the property sense, belong to 



84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

loyal owners ; and hence provision is made in this article for 
compensating such. 

The third article relates to the future of the freed people. It 
does not oblige, but merely authorizes, Congress to aid in col- 
5 onizing such as may consent. This ought not to be regarded 
as objectionable, on the one hand or on the other, insomuch 
as it comes to nothing unless by the mutual consent of the 
people to be deported, and the American voters through their 
representatives in Congress. 

10 I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I 

strongly favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an 

objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the 

country which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious. 

It is insisted that their presence would injure and displace 

1 5 white labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper 
time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In 
times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they 
would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. 
Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any more 

2o white labor by being free than by remaining slaves ? If they 
stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers ; if they 
leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. 
Logically, there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, 
even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of 

25 white labor, and very surely would not reduce them. Thus, the 
customary amount of labor would still have to be performed ; 
the freed people would surely not do more than their old propor- 
tion of it, and very probably for a time would do less, leaving 
an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor into 

30 greater demand, and consequently enhancing the wages of it. 
With deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to 
white labor is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other 
commodity in the market — increase the demand for it, and 
you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor by 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 85 

colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so 
much you increase the demand for, and wages of, white labor. 

But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and 
cover the whole land ? Are they not already in the land ? Will 
liberation make them any more numerous ? Equally distributed 5 
among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but 
one colored to seven whites. Could the one in any way greatly 
disturb the seven ? There are many communities now having 
more than one free colored person to seven whites, and this 
without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The Dis- 10 
trict of Columbia, and the states of Maryland and Delaware, 
are all in this condition. The District has more than one free 
colored to six whites ; and yet in its frequent petitions to Con- 
gress I believe it has never presented the presence of free 
colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should 15 
emancipation south send the free people North ? People of any 
color seldom run unless there be something to run from. Here- 
tofore colored people, to some extent, have fled North from 
bondage ; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitu- 
tion. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, 20 
they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give 
them wages at least until new laborers can be procured ; and 
the freedmen, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages 
till new homes can be found for them in congenial climes and 
with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can 25 
be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, 
cannot the North decide for itself whether to receive them ? 

Again, as practice proves more than theory, in any case, has 
there been any irruption of colored people northward because 
of the abolishment of slavery in this District last spring ? 30 

What I have said of the proportion of free colored persons 
to the whites in the District is from the census of i860, having 
no reference to persons called contrabands, nor to those made 
free by the act of Congress abolishing slavery here. 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The plan consisting of these articles is recommended, not but 
that a restoration of the national authority would be accepted 
without its adoption. 

Nor will the war, nor proceedings under the proclamation of 
5 September 22, 1862, be stayed because of the recommendation 
of this plan. Its timely adoption, I doubt not, would bring res- 
toration, and thereby stay both. 

And, notwithstanding this plan, the recommendation that 
Congress provide by law for compensating any state which 
10 may adopt emancipation before this plan shall have been acted 
upon, is hereby earnestly renewed. Such would be only an ad- 
vance part of the plan, and the -same arguments apply to both. 

This plan is recommended as a means, not in exclusion of, 
but additional to, all others for restoring and preserving the 
15 national authority throughout the Union. The subject is pre- 
sented exclusively in its economical aspect. The plan would, I 
am confident, secure peace more speedily, and maintain it more 
permanently, than can be done by force alone ; while all it would 
cost, considering amounts, and manner of payment, and times 
20 of payment, would be easier paid than will be the additional 
cost of the war if we rely solely upon force. It is much — very 
much — that it would cost no blood at all. 

The plan is proposed as permanent constitutional law. It 
cannot become such without the concurrence of, first, two thirds 
25 of Congress and, afterward, three fourths of the states. The 
requisite three fourths of the states will necessarily include 
seven of the slave states. Their concurrence, if obtained, will 
give assurance of their severally adopting emancipation at no 
very distant day upon the new constitutional terms. This assur- 
30 ance would end the struggle now, and save the Union forever. 

I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper 
addressed to the Congress of the nation by the chief magis- 
trate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my 
seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 8/ 

the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great 
responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of re- 
spect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may seem to display. 

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, 
would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of 5 
money and of blood ? Is it doubted that it would restore the 
national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both 
indefinitely ? Is it doubted that we here — Congress and exec- 
utive — can secure its adoption ? Will not the good people 
respond to a united and earnest appeal from us ? Can we, can 10 
they, by any other means so certainly or so speedily assure 
these vital objects .? We can succeed only by concert. It is not 
"Can any of us imagine better ? " but, " Can we all do better ? " 
Object whatsoever is possible, still the question occurs, " Can 
we do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate 15 
to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with diffi- 
culty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, 
so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall 
ourselves, and then we shall save our country. 

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Con- 20 
gress and this administration will be remembered in spite of 
ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare 
one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass 
will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest genera- 
tion. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget 25 
that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world 
knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — 
hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom 
to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike 
in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save 30 
or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may 
succeed ; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, gener- 
ous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever 

applaud, and God must forever bless. 

Abraham Lincoln 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

(January i, 1863) 

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the 
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a 
proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, 
containing, among other things, the following, to wit : 

5 That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves 
within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, 
thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Executive Government of 

10 the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, 
will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will 
do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any 
efforts they may make for their actual freedom. 

That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by 

1 5 proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in ■ 
which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion 
against the United States ; and the fact that any state, or the people 
thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress 
of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein 

20 a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated, 
shall in the absence of strong countervailing testimony be deemed 
conclusive evidence that such state and the people thereof are not 
then in rebellion against the United States. 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
25 States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander in 
chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of 
actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of 
the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure 
for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, 
30 in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly 
proclaimed for the full period of 100 days from the day first 
above mentioned, order and designate as the states and parts of 



EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 89 

states wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in 
rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit : 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Ber- 
nard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, 
Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. 5 
Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mis- 
sissippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North 
Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties desig- 
nated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, 
Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, 10 
and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), 
and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if 
this proclamation were not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, 
I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within 15 
said designated states and parts of states are, and henceforward 
shall be, free ; and that the executive government of the United 
States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will 
recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free 20 
to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense ; 
and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they 
labor faithfully for reasonable wages. 

And I further declare and make known that such persons of 
suitable condition w^ill be received into the armed service of the 25 
United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other 
places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. 

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, 
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of 30 
Almighty God. 

In witness, etc. Abraham Lincoln 

By the President : William H. Seward, Secretary of State 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

LETTER TO GENERAL JOSEPH HOOKER 

(January 26, 1863) 
General : 

I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. 
Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be 
sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that 
there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satis- 
5 fied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, 
which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix politics 
with your profession, in which you are right. You have con- 
fidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable 
quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, 

10 does good rather than harm ; but I think that during General 
Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of 
your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which 
you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious 
and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as 

15 to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and 
the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for 
this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. 
Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. 
What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the 

20 dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost 
of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done 
and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit 
which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their 
commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn 

25 upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. 
Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any 
good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it ; and now 
beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and 
sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. 

Yours very truly 

A. Lincoln 



PROCLAMATION FOR A NATIONAL FAST DAY 91 

PROCLAMATION FOR A NATIONAL FAST DAY 
(March 30, 1863) 

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recog- 
nizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty 
God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has by a resolution 
requested the President to designate and set apart a day for 
national prayer and humiliation : 5 

And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to 
own their dependence upon the overruling power of God ; to 
confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with 
assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and 
pardon ; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the 10 
Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations 
only are blessed whose God is the Lord : 

And insomuch as we know that by his divine law nations, 
like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements 
in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of 15 
civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment 
inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end 
of our national reformation as a whole people ? We have been 
the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have 
been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We 20 
have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation 
has ever grown ; but we have forgotten God. We have for- 
gotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and 
multiplied and enriched and strengthened us ; and we have 
vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all 25 
these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and 
virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have 
become too self-suflicient to feel the necessity of redeeming and 
preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us : 

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended 30 
Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency 
and forgiveness : 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully 
concurring in the views, of the Senate, I do by this my 
proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day 
of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and 
5 prayer. And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on 
that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at 
their several places of public worship and their respective homes 
in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble 
discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. 

10 All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest 
humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that 
the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and an- 
swered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national 
sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering coun- 

15 try to its former happy condition of unity and peace. 

In witness, etc. 

Abraham Lincoln 
By the President : 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State 

LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT 

,, ^ ^ Executive Mansion 

Major General Grant „t 1 • 

Wasmngton, July 13, 1863 
My dear General : 

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I 
write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost in- 
estimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a 
word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, 

20 I thought you should do what you finally did — march the troops 
across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus 
go below ; and I never had any faith, except a general hope 
that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition 
and the like could succeed. When you got below and took Port 

25 Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down 



THE WAR AND EMANCIPATION 93 

the river and join General Banks, and when you turned north- 
ward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now 
wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were 

right and I was wrong. 

Yours very truly 

A. Lincoln 

LETTER STATING HIS POSITION IN REGARD TO 
THE WAR AND TO EMANCIPATION 

Executive Mansion 
Washington, August 26, 1863 
Hon. James C. Conkling, Esq. 

My dear Sir : 

Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of uncondi- 5 
tional Union men, to be held at the capital of Illinois on the 3d day 
of September, has been received. It would be very agreeable to me 
to thus meet my old friends at my own home, but I cannot just 
now be absent from here so long as a visit there would require. 

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional 10 
devotion to the Union ; and I am sure my old political friends 
will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to 
those and other noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan 
hope can make false to the nation's life. 

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I 15 
would say : You desire peace, and you blame me that we do 
not have it. But how can we attain it ? There are but three 
conceivable ways : First, to suppress the rebellion by force of 
arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it ? If you are, so far 
we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up 20 
the Union. I am against this. Are you for it ? If you are, you 
should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor yet for dis- 
solution, there only remains some imaginable compromise, I do 
not believe any compromise embracing the maintenance of the 
Union is now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite 25 



94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army. 
That army dominates all the country and all the people within 
its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or men within 
that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the 
5 present, because such man or men have no power whatever to 
enforce their side of a compromise if one were made with them. 
To illustrate : Suppose refugees from the South and peace 
men of the North get together in convention, and frame and pro- 
claim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union. In 

lo what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army out 
of Pennsylvania? Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of 
Pennsylvania, and, I think, can ultimately drive it out of exist- 
ence. But no paper compromise to which the controllers of 
Lee's army are not agreed can at all affect that army. In an 

1 5 effort at such compromise we should waste time which the enemy 
would improve to our disadvantage ; and that would be all. A 
compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those 
who control the rebel army, or with the people first liberated 
from the domination of that army by the success of our own 

2o army. Now, allow me to assure you that no word or intimation 
from that rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in 
relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowl- 
edge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the contrary are 
deceptive and groundless. And I promise you that if any such 

25 proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be rejected and kept 

a secret from you. I freely acknowledge myself the servant of 

the people, according to the bond of service — the United States 

Constitution — and that, as such, I am responsible to them. 

But to be plain. You are dissatisfied with me about the negro. 

30 Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and 
myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be 
free, while I suppose you do not. Yet, I have neither adopted 
nor proposed any measure which is not consistent with even your 
view, provided you are for the Union. I suggested compensated 



THE WAR AND EMANCIPATION 95 

emancipation, to which you replied you wished not to be taxed 
to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy 
negroes, except in such way as to save you from greater taxation 
to save the Union exclusively by other means. 

You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and perhaps 5 
would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I think 
differently. I think the Constitution invests its commander in 
chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be 
said — if so much — is that slaves arc property. Is there — has 
there ever been — any question that by the law of war, property, 10 
both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed ? And 
is it not needed whenever taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy ? 
Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property when they 
cannot use it ; and even destroy their own to keep it from the 
enemy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help them- 1 5 
selves or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded as 
barbarous or cruel. Among .the exceptions are the massacre 
of vanquished foes and noncombatants, male and female. 

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid. 
If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot 20 
be retracted any more than the dead can be brought to life. 
Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favor- 
ably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than before 
the issue .'* There was more than a year and a half of trial to 
suppress the rebellion before the proclamation issued ; the last 25 
one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that 
it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt returning to 
their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favorably 
for us since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know, as 
fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the 30 
commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our 
most important successes, believe the emancipation policy and 
the use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet 
dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of these important 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

successes could not have been achieved when it was but for 
the aid of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding these 
views are some who have never had any affinity with what is 
called abolitionism, or with Republican party politics, but who 
5 hold them purely as military opinions. I submit these opinions 
as being entitled to some weight against the objections often 
urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as 
military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith. 
You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them 

lo seem willing to fight for you ; but no matter. Fight you, then, 
exclusively, to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on 
purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall 
have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you 
to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to 

15 declare you will not fight to free negroes. 

I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever ex- 
tent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent 
it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think 
differently ? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as 

20 soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soliders to do in saving 
the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? But negroes, like 
other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything 
for us if we will do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives 
for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the 

25 promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept. 

The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes 

unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it. 

Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met 

New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way 

30 right and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, 
also lent a hand. On the spot, their part of the history was 
jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national 
one, and let none be banned who bore an honorable part in it. 
And while those who have cleared the great river may well be 



PROCLAMATION FOR THANKSGIVING 97 

proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has 
been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfrees- 
boro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor 
must Uncle Sam's webfeet be forgotten. At all the watery 
margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, 5 
the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, 
muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, 
they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all : for the 
great republic — for the principle it lives by and keeps alive — 
for man's vast future — thanks to all. ^° 

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth 
the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved 
that among free men there can be no successful appeal from 
the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are ^5 
sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And then there will be 
some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, 
and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, 
they have helped mankind on to this great consummation, while 
I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with ^° 
malignant heart and deceitful speech they strove to hinder it. 

Still, let us not be oversanguine of a speedy final triumph. 

Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, 

never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give 

us the rightful result. 

Yours very truly 

A. Lincoln 

PROCLAMATION FOR THANKSGIVING 

(October 3, 1863) 

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with 

the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these 

bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to 

forget the source from which they come, others have been added, 



25 



98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to 
penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to 
the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God, 

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and sever- 
5 ity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and 
provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all 
nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected 
and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the 
theater of military conflict ; while that theater has been greatly 

lo contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. 
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields 
of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested 
the plow, the shuttle, or the ship ; the ax has enlarged the bor- 
ders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal 

15 as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly 
than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwith- 
standing the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, 
and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the conscious- 
ness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect 

20 continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand 
worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of 
the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our 
sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. 

25 It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be sol- 
emnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart 
and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, 
invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and 
also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign 

30 lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November 
next as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father 
who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, 
while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular 
deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence 



THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 99 

for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his 
tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourn- 
ers, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are 
unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of 
the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to re- 5 
store it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to 
the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union. 

In testimony, etc. . ^ 

A. Lincoln 

By the Preside Jit: 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State 

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 

(Delivered at the dedication of the National Cemetery, 
November 19, 1863) 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created equal. 10 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting 
place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might 1 5 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot con- 
secrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, 
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far 
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little 20 
note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never for- 
get what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be 
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that 25 



lOO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; 
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
5 freedom ; and that government of the people, by the people, 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

AMNESTY FOR THOSE IN REBELLION 

(Extract from annual message, December 8, 1863) 

. . . When Congress assembled a year ago the war had already 
lasted nearly twenty months, and there had been many conflicts 
on both land and sea with varying results. The rebellion had 

10 been pressed back into reduced limits ; yet the tone of public 
feeling and opinion, at home and abroad, was not satisfactory. 
With other signs, the popular elections, then just past, indicated 
uneasiness among ourselves, while, amid much that was cold 
and menacing, the kindest words coming from Europe were 

15 uttered in accents of pity that we were too blind to surrender 
a hopeless cause. Our commerce was suffering greatly by a few 
armed vessels built upon, and furnished from, foreign shores, 
and we were threatened with such additions from the same quar- 
ter as would sweep our trade from the sea and raise our blockade. 

20 We had failed to elicit from European governments anything 
hopeful upon this subject. The preliminary emancipation procla- 
mation, issued in September, was running its assigned period to 
the beginning of the new year. A month later the final procla- 
mation came, including the announcement that colored men of 

25 suitable condition, would be received into the war service. 

The policy of emancipation, and of employing black soldiers, 
gave to the future a new aspect, about which hope, and fear, 
and doubt contended in uncertain conflict. According to our 
political system, as a matter of civil administration, the general 

30 government had no lawful power to effect emancipation in any 



AMNESTY FOR THOSE IN REBELLION lOI 

state, and for a long time it had been hoped that the rebellion 
could be suppressed without resorting to it as a military measure. 
It was all the while deemed possible that the necessity for it 
might come, and that if it should, the crisis of the contest would 
then be presented. It came, and, as was anticipated, it was fol- 5 
lowed by dark and doubtful days. Eleven months having now 
passed, we are permitted to take another review. The rebel 
borders are pressed still further back, and, by the complete 
opening of the Mississippi, the country dominated by the re- 
bellion is divided into distinct parts, with no practical commu- 10 
nication between them. Tennessee and Arkansas have been 
substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens 
in each, owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the begin- 
ning of the rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in 
their respective states. Of those states not included in the 15 
Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland and Missouri, neither of 
which three years ago would tolerate any restraint upon the 
extension of slavery into new territories, only dispute now 
as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits. 

Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, 20 
full one hundred thousand are now in the United States military 
service, about one half of which number actually bear arms in 
the ranks ; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much 
labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which 
otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So far as 25 
tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any. 
No servile insurrection, or tendency to violence or cruelty, has 
marked the measures of emancipation and arming the blacks. 
These measures have been much discussed in foreign countries, 
and contemporary with such discussion the tone of public senti- 30 
ment there is much improved. At home the same measures 
have been fully discussed, supported, criticized, and denounced, 
and the annual elections following are highly encouraging to those 
whose official duty it is to bear the country through this great 



I02 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

trial. Thus we have the new reckoning. The crisis which 
threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past. 

Looking now to the present and future, and with reference 
to . a resumption of the national authority within the states 
5 wherein that authority has been suspended, I have thought fit 
to issue a proclamation, a copy of which is herewith transmitted. 
On examination of this proclamation it will appear, as is believed, 
that nothing is attempted beyond what is amply justified by the 
Constitution. True, the form of an oath is given, but no man 

10 is coerced to take it. The man is only promised a pardon in 
case he voluntarily takes the oath. The Constitution authorises 
the executive to grant or withhold the pardon at his own abso- 
lute discretion ; and this includes the power to grant on terms, 
as is fully established by judicial and other authorities. 

15 It is also proffered that if, in any cf the states named, a state 
government shall be, in the mode prescribed, set up, such 
government shall be recognized and guaranteed by the United 
States, and that under it the state shall, on the constitutional 
conditions, be protected against invasion and domestic violence. 

20 The constitutional obligation of the United States to guarantee 
to every state in the Union a republican form of government, 
and to protect the state in the cases stated, is explicit and full. 
But why tender the benefits of this provision only to a state 
government set up in this particular way ? This section of the 

25 Constitution contemplates a case wherein the element within a 
state favorable to republican government in the Union may be 
too feeble for an opposite and hostile element external to, or 
even within, the state ; and such are precisely the cases with 
which we are now dealing. 

30 An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived state govern- 
ment, constructed in whole, or in preponderating part, from the 
very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be 
protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to 
separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the 



AMNESTY FOR THOSE IN REBELLION 103 

sound ; and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts 
as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former 
unsoundness. 

But if it be proper to require, as a test of admission to the 
political body, an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the 5 
United States, and to the Union under it, why also to the laws 
and proclamations in regard to slavery ? Those laws and proc- 
lamations were enacted and put forth for the purpose of aiding 
in the suppression of the rebellion. To give them their fullest 
effect, there had to be a pledge for their maintenance. In my 10 
judgment they have aided, and will further aid, the cause for 
which they were intended. To now abandon them would be not 
only to relinquish a lever of power, but would also be a cruel 
and an astounding breach of faith. I may add, at this point, that 
while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to 15 
retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation ; nor shall I 
return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that 
proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress. For these and 
other reasons it is thought best that support of these measures 
shall be included in the oath ; and it is believed the executive 20 
may lawfully claim it in return for pardon and restoration of 
forfeited rights, which he has clear constitutional power to with- 
hold altogether, or grant upon the terms which he shall deem 
wisest for the public interest. It should be observed, also, that 
this part of the oath is subject to the modifying and abrogating 25 
power of legislation and supreme judicial decision. 

The proposed acquiescence of the national executive in any 
reasonable temporary state arrangement for the freed people is 
made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and 
destitution which must at best attend all classes by a total revo- 30 
lution of labor throughout whole states. It is hoped that the 
already deeply afflicted people in those states may be somewhat 
more ready to give up the cause of their affliction, if, to this ex- 
tent, this vital matter be left to themselves ; while no power of 



I04 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the national executive to prevent an abuse is abridged by the 
proposition. 

The suggestion in the proclamation as to maintaining the 
political framework of the states on what is called reconstruc- 
5 tion is made in the hope that it may do good without danger of 
harm. It will save labor, and avoid great confusion. 

But why any proclamation now upon this subject ? This 
question is beset with the conflicting views that the step might 
be delayed too long or be taken too soon. In some states the 

lo elements for resumption seem ready for action, but remain in- 
active apparently for want of a rallying point — a plan of action. 
Why shall A adopt the plan of B, rather than B that of A ? 
And if A and B should agree, how can they know but that the 
general government here will reject their plan ? By the procla- 

15 mation a plan is presented which may be accepted by them as 
a rallying point, and which they are assured in advance will not 
be rejected here. This may bring them to act sooner than they 
otherwise would. 

The objection to a premature presentation of a plan by the 

20 national executive consists in the danger of committals on points 
which could be more safely left to further developments. Care 
has been taken to so shape the document as to avoid embar- 
rassments from this source. Saying that, on certain terms, cer- 
tain classes will be pardoned, with rights restored, it is not said 

25 that other classes, or other terms, will never be included. Saying 
that reconstruction will be accepted if presented in a specified 
way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other way. 

The movements, by state action, for emancipation in several 
of the states not included in the Emancipation Proclamation, 

30 are matters of profound gratulation. And while I do not repeat 
in detail what I have heretofore so earnestly urged upon this 
subject, my general views and feelings remain unchanged ; and 
I trust that Congress will omit no fair opportunity of aiding these 
important steps to a great consummation. 



NEGROES AND THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE 105 

In the midst of other cares, however important, we must not 
lose sight of the fact that the war power is still our main reli- 
ance. To that power alone can we look, yet for a time, to give 
confidence to the people in the contested regions that the in- 
surgent power will not again overrun them. Until that confi- 5 
dence shall be established, little can be done anywhere for what 
is called reconstruction. Hence our chiefest care must still be 
directed to the army and navy, who have thus far borne their 
harder part so nobly and well. And it may be esteemed fortu- 
nate that in giving the greatest efficiency to these indispensable 10 
arms, we do also honorably recognize the gallant men, from 
commander to sentinel, who compose them, and to whom, more 
than to others, the world must stand indebted for the home of 
freedom disenthralled, regenerated, enlarged, and perpetuated. 

Abraham Lincoln 

SUGGESTING THAT INTELLIGENT NEGROES BE 
ADMITTED TO THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE 

(Private) 

Executive Mansion 
Hon. Michael Hahn Washington, March 13, 1864 

My dear Sir : 

I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as 15 

the first free-state governor of Louisiana. Now you are about 

to have a convention, which, among other things, will probably 

define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private 

consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be 

let in — as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those 20 

who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably 

help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty 

within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not 

to the public, but to you alone. 

^ ^ Yours truly 

A. Lincoln 



I06 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

REVIEW OF SLAVERY POLICY 

Executive Mansion 
A. G. Hodges, Esq. Washington, April 4, 1864 

Frankfort, Kentucky 
My dear Sir : 

You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I ver- 
bally said the other day in your presence, to Governor Bramlette 
and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows : 

" I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing 
5 is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, 
and yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred 
upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judg- 
ment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the 
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution 

10 of the United States. I could not take the office without taking 
the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get 
power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, 
too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade 
me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the 

15 moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many 
times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have 
done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment 
and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath 
to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed 

20 upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, 
that government — that nation, of which that Constitution was 
the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet pre- 
serve the Constitution ? By general law, life and limb must be 
protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life ; 

25 but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that meas- 
ures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becom- 
ing indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through 
the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this 



REVIEW OF SLAVERY POLICY lo/ 

ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of 
my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to 
save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of 
government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early 
in the war. General Fre'mont attempted military emancipation, 5 
I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable 
necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secre- 
tary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected 
because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, 
still later. General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I lo 
again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable 
necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, 
I made earnest and successive appeals to the border states to 
favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable 
necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would 1 5 
come unless averted by that measure. They declined the propo- 
sition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative 
of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, 
or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the 
latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss ; but 20 
of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial 
now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our 
home popular sentiment, none in our white military force — no 
loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary it shows a gain 
of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and 25 
laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there 
can be no caviling. We have the men ; and we could not have 
had them without the measure. 

"And now let any Union "man who complains of the measure 
test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing 30 
the rebellion by force of arms ; and in the next, that he is for 
taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union 
side, and placing them where they would be but for the meas- 
ure he condemns. If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only 
because he cannot face the truth," 



I08 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In 
telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. 
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that 
events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' 

5 struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any 
man, devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it 
is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great 
wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the 
South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impar- 

o tial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the 

justice and goodness of God. 

Yours truly 

A. Lincoln 



LETTER TO GENERAL U. S. GRANT 

Executive Mansion 
Washington, April 30, 1864 
Lieutenant General Grant : 

Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign 
opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with 
what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. 

1 5 The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. 
You are vigilant and self-reliant ; and, pleased with this, I wish 
not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I 
am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men 
in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less 

20 likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If 

there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do 

not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a 

just cause, may God sustain you. 

Yours very truly 

A. Lincoln 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 109 

LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY 

(November 21, 1864) 
Dear Madam : 

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a 
statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you 
are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the 
field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any 
words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the 5 
grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from 
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the 
thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our 
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereave- 
ment, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 10 
and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid 
so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 

Yours very sincerely and respectfully 

Abraham Lincoln 

EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE 
(December 6, 1864) 
. . . The most reliable indication of public purpose in this 
country is derived through our popular elections. Judging by 
the recent canvass and its result, the purpose of the people 15 
within the loyal states to maintain the integrity of the Union, 
was never more firm nor more nearly unanimous than now. 
The extraordinary calmness and good order with which the 
millions of voters met and mingled at the polls give strong 
assurance of this. Not only all those who supported the Union 20 
ticket, so called, but a great majority of the opposing party 
also, may be fairly claimed to entertain, and to be actuated by, 
the same purpose. It is an unanswerable argument to this 
effect, that no candidate for any office whatever, high or low, 
has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving 25 



no ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

up the Union. There has been much impugning of motives, 
and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best 
mode of advancing the Union cause ; but on the distinct issue 
of Union or no Union the politicians have shown their in- 
5 stinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. 
In affording the people the fair opportunity of showing one to 
another and to the world this firmness and unanimity of pur- 
pose, the election has been of vast value to the national cause: 
The election has exhibited another fact, not less valuable to 

lo be known — the fact that we do not approach exhaustion in 
the most important branch of national resources — that of 
living men. While it is melancholy to reflect that the war has 
filled so many graves, and carried mourning to so many hearts, 
it is some relief to know that compared with the surviving, the 

15 fallen have been so few. While corps, and divisions, and 
brigades, and regiments have formed, and fought, and dwin- 
dled, and gone out of existence, a great majority of the men 
who composed them are still living. The same is true of the 
naval service. The election returns prove this. So many voters 

20 could not else be found. The states regularly holding elec- 
tions, both now and four years ago — to wit : California, 
Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, 
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mis- 
souri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, 

25 Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and 
Wisconsin — cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast 
then; showing an aggregate now of 3,982,011. To this is to 
be added 33,762 cast now in the new states of Kansas and 
Nevada, which states did not vote in i860; thus swelling the 

30 aggregate to 4,015,773, and the net increase during the three 
years and a half of war, to 145,551. A table is appended, 
showing particulars. To this again should be added the num- 
ber of all soldiers in the field from Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, and California, 



EXTRACT FROM ANNUAL MESSAGE m 

who by the laws of those states could not vote away from their 
homes, and which number cannot be less than 90,000. Nor yet 
is this all. The number in organized territories is triple now what 
it was four years ago, while thousands, white and black, join us 
as the national arms press back the insurgent lines. So much 5 
is shown, affirmatively and negatively, by the election. 

It is not material to inquire how the increase has been pro- 
duced, or to show that it would have been greater but for the 
war, which is probably true. The important fact remains demon- 
strated that we have more men now than we had when the war 10 
began ; that we are not exhausted, nor in process of exhaustion ; 
that we are gaining strength, and may, if need be, maintain the 
contest indefinitely. This as to men. Material resources are 
now more complete and abundant than ever. 

The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we 15 
believe, inexhaustible. The public purpose to reestablish and 
maintain the national authority is unchanged, and, as we believe, 
unchangeable. The manner of continuing the effort remains to 
choose. On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible, 
it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent 20 
leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short 
of severance of the Union — precisely what we will not and 
cannot give. His declarations to this effect are explicit and oft 
repeated. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us 
no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept 25 
the Union ; we cannot voluntarily yield it. 

Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. 
It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. 
If we yield, we are beaten ; if the Southern people fail him, he is 
beaten. Either way it would be the victory and defeat following 30 
war. What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause, 
is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot 
reaccept the Union, they can. Some of them, we know, already 
desire peace and reunion. The number of such may increase. 



112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

They can at any moment have peace simply by laying down 
their arms and submitting to the national authority under the 
Constitution. After so much the government could not, if it 
would, maintain war against them. The loyal people would not 
5 sustain or allow it. If questions should remain, we would adjust 
them by the peaceful means of legislation, conference, courts, 
and votes, operating only in constitutional and lawful channels. 
Some certain, and other possible, questions are, and would be, 
beyond the executive power to adjust ; as, for instance, the ad- 

10 mission of members into Congress, and whatever might require 
the appropriation of money. The executive power itself would 
be greaj;ly diminished by the cessation of actual war. Pardons 
and remissions of forfeitures, however, would still be within 
executive control. In what spirit and temper this control would 

15 be exercised, can be fairly judged of by the past. 

A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, 
were offered to all except certain designated classes, and it was 
at the same time made known that the excepted classes were 
still within contemplation of special clemency. During the year 

20 many availed themselves of the general provision, and many 
more would, only that the signs of bad faith in some led to such 
precautionary measures as rendered the practical process less 
easy and certain. During the same time, also, special pardons 
have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and 

25 no voluntary application has been denied. 

Thus, practically, the door has been for a full year open to 
all, except such as were not in condition to make free choice — 
that is, such as were in custody or under constraint. It is still 
so open to all ; but the time may come — probably will come — 

30 when public duty shall demand that it be closed ; and that in 
lieu more rigorous measures than heretofore shall be adopted. 
In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the 
national authority on the part of the insurgents as the only in- 
dispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the 



PART OF SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 113 

goverment, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. I 
repeat the declaration made a year ago, that '' while I remain 
in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify 
the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery 
any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or 5 
by any of the acts of Congress." 

If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it 
an executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not 
I, must be their instrument to perform it. 

In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say, 10 
that the war will cease on the part of the government whenever 
it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it. 

Abraham Lincoln 

PART OF SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

(March 4, 1865) 

. . . On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, 
all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. 
All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the inaugural 15 
address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether 
to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the 
city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the' 
Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties depre- 
cated war ; but one of them would make war rather than let the 20 
nation survive ; and the other would accept war rather than let 
it perish. And the war came. 

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not 
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the south- 
em part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful 25 
interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause 
of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest 
was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, 
even by war ; while the government claimed no right to do more 
than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 3° 



114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that 
the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the 
conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
5 and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the 
same Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes his 
aid against the other. 

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other 

lo men's faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The 
prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has 
been answered fully. 

The Almighty has his own purposes. " Woe unto the world 
because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; 

15 but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall 
suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in 
the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having con- 
tinued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and 
that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the 

20 woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern 
therein any departure from those divine attributes wnich the be- 
lievers in a living God always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we hope 
— fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the 

25 wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of un- 
requited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 
" The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

30 With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness 
in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; 
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, 
and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish 

35 a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. 



RECONSTRUCTION 1 1 5 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOUTHERN 
STATES 

(Extract from last speech, April 11, 1865) 

. . . We all agree that the seceded states, so called, are out 
of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the 
sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to 
those states is to again get them into that proper practical rela- 
tion. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to 5 
do this without deciding or even considering whether these states 
have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding them- 
selves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether 
they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts 
necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between 10 
these states and the Union, and each forever after innocently 
indulge his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought 
the states from without into the Union, or only gave them 
proper assistance, they never having been out of it. The amount 
of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana gov- 15 
ernment rests, would be more satisfactory to all if it contained 
50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about 12,000, 
as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective 
franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself pre- 
fer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on 20 
those who serve our cause as soldiers. 

Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, 
as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, Will 
it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject 
and disperse it ? Can Louisiana be brought into proper prac- 25 
tical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discard- 
ing her new state government? Some 12,000 voters in the 
heretofore slave state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the 
Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the state, 
held elections, organized a state government, adopted a free- 3° 
state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to 



Il6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

black and white, and empowering the legislature to confer the 
elective franchise upon the colored man. Their legislature has 
already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently 
passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. 
5 These 12,000 persons are thus fully committed to the Union and 
to perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very things, 
and nearly all the things, the nation wants — and they ask the na- 
tion's recognition and its assistance to make good their committal. 
Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to dis- 

10 organize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white man : 
You are worthless or worse ; we will neither help you, nor be 
helped by you. To the blacks we say : This cup of liberty which 
these, your old masters, hold to your lips we will dash from 
you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and 

15 scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, 
and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white 
and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper prac- 
tical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to per- 
ceive it. If, on the contray, we recognize and sustain the new 

20 government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. 
We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of the 12,000 to 
adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and 
fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete 
success. The colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is 

25 inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same 
end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not 
attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it 
than by running backward over them ? Concede that the new 
government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the 

30 egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching 
the egg than by smashing it. 



NOTES 

VIEWS ON MONEY-LOANING, EDUCATION, AND 
LAWMAKING (Page 3) 

Lincoln's first public address was to the people of Sangamon County, 
Illinois. He had already announced himself as a candidate for the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the state (the convention system was not in vogue at 
that time). The only preliminary expected of a candidate was to state 
his views in a printed circular, which was distributed through his dis- 
trict. Lincoln's circialar was a document of about two thousand words, 
the bulk of it given to a subject of absorbing interest at that period, 
— the public utility of internal improvements. In the interval between 
the appearance of this circular in March and the election in August 
came the Black Hawk War, in which Lincoln served as captain of a 
volunteer company. Lincoln was defeated in the August election — 
the only time, he says in his brief autobiography, that he was ever 
defeated on the direct vote of the people. 



POLITICAL VIEWS IN 1836 (Page 5) 

Lincoln was first elected to the General Assembly of Illinois in 1834. 
He ran for reelection in 1836 and was successful. It was at this time 
that this letter to the Joiirnal was written. The only expression on 
woman suffrage to be found in Lincoln's collected works is in this 
document. 



FIRST PUBLIC PROTEST AGAINST SLAVERY (Page 6) 

The year that this public protest against slavery was published, a 
proslavery mob made up of citizens of Alton, Illinois, killed Elijah 
Lovejoy, the editor of an antislavery newspaper published in the town. 
At Springfield, where Mr. Lincoln lived, the citizens held a mass meet- 
ing and resolved that " the efforts of the abolitionists in this community 
are neither necessary nor useful." 

117 



Il8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

LETTER TO WILLIAMSON DURLEY (Page 7) 

Williamson Durley and his brother Madison were prominent leaders 
of the " Liberal party," which in 1845 nominated James G. Birney as its 
candidate for the presidency. 

LETTER TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON (Page 9) 

Mr. Herndon, in his " Life of Lincoln," explains the circumstance 
which called out this letter: "I felt at this time (1848), somewhat in 
advance of its occurrence, the death throes of the Whig party. I did 
not conceal my suspicions, and one of the Springfield papers gave my 
sentiments liberal quotation in its columns. I felt gloomy over the pros- 
pect, and cut out these newspaper slips and sent them to Lincoln. 
Accompanying these I wrote him a letter equally melancholy in tone, 
in which, among other things, I reflected severely on the stubbornness 
and bad judgment of the fossils in the party, who were constantly hold- 
ing the young men back. This brought from him a letter, July 10, 1848, 
which is clearly Lincolnian and full of plain philosophy. Not the least 
singular of all is his allusion to himself as an old man, although he had 
scarcely passed his thirty-ninth year." 

LETTER TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON (Page 13) 

Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died on October 5, 
1818. In December, 1819, Thomas Lincoln married in Elizabethtown, 
Kentucky, Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow whom he had known as 
a young girl. Mrs. Johnston had three children, the oldest of whom was 
John D. These children grew up with Abraham, and he always spoke 
of John Johnston as his brother. 

REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE (Page 16) 

The Missouri Compromise, passed in 1820, provided that Missouri 
might come in as a slave state, if slavery was never allowed north of 
36° 30' north latitude. In 1853 Nebraska, which was north of the free 
line established by the Missouri Compromise, desired to be organized 
as a territory, and Stephen A. Douglas, a member from Illinois of the 
Senate of the United States, introduced a bill giving both Nebraska and 
Kansas the government they asked. Later he added to this bill an 
amendment repealing the Missouri Compromise and permitting settlers 
in the new territory to reject or establish slavery as they should see fit. 
This bill was passed. In October of 1854 Douglas came to Springfield 
to explain his bill to his Illinois constituents whom it had disturbed. 



^ NOTES 119 

Lincoln's answer to this speech made a profound impression and forced 
Douglas at once into a defense of his measure. Lincoln's chief argu- 
ment was made in 1854 at Peoria, on October 16, 
20 10 Pro tanto : by so much ; to that extent. 

AFTER THE DEFEAT OF 1856 (Page 25) 

In 1856 Lincoln publicly broke his connection with the Whig party and 
joined the Republican Party, which had been organized that year in Illi- 
nois. He made some fifty speeches during the campaign for Fremont, 
who was the Republican candidate for the presidency. Fremont was de- 
feated, though he had nearly one hundred thousand votes in Illinois, and 
the Republican candidate for governor of the state, Bissell, was elected. 

26 18 The Dred Scott decision was pronounced by Chief Justice 
Taney on March 6, 1857. Nicolay and Hay in their "Abraham Lincoln : 
A History" summarize its leading conclusions as follows (Vol. II, 
p. 73) : "That the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 
the United States do not include or refer to negroes otherwise than as 
property ; that they cannot become citizens of the United States or 
sue in the federal courts ; that Dred Scott's claim to freedom by reason 
of his residence in Illinois was a Missouri question, which Missouri law 
had decided against him ; that the Constitution of the United States 
recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the federal government to 
protect it; and that the Missouri Compromise act and like prohibitory 
laws are unconstitutional ; that the circuit court of the United States 
had no jurisdiction in the case and could give no judgment in it, and 
must be directed to dismiss the suit." 

28 19 The President to whom Lincoln here refers was James Bu- 
chanan ; he had been questioned in a memorial signed by Professor 
Benjamin Silliman of Yale College, and other citizens of New England, 
concerning the Dred Scott decision, and he had replied in a public 
letter in which he said that slavery existed in Kansas under the Con- 
stitution of the United States ; that this had been decided by the high- 
est tribunal known to our laws ; and he added, " How it could have 
ever been seriously doubted is a mystery." 

28 25 In 1857 a convention was held at Lecompton, Kansas, to 
frame a constitution for the new territories. It included a clause 
permitting slavery ; this clause, submitted apart from the rest of the 
constitution, was adopted in December, 1857. In January, 1858, the 
constitution as a whole was submitted and rejected. 

31 5 The four workmen to whom Lincoln refers as " Stephen, 
Franklin, Roger, and James," are Senator Stephen A. Douglas, author 



I20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ; Franklin Pierce, fourteenth 
president of the United States, who agreed to make the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise a party measure ; Roger B. Taney, chief justice 
of the United States, who pronounced the Dred Scott decision ; and 
James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States, who defended 
that decision. 

35 24 Francis Preston Blair, known as Frank Blair, was a Missouri 
politician and a prominent leader of Union sentiment in his state. 
Gratz Brown was also a Missouri Unionist. Both men were active 
supporters of the emancipation of the negro. 

LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Page 37) 

One of the first Illinois politicians to conceive the idea that Lincoln 
might be an available candidate for the presidency in i860 was Jesse W. 
Fell of Bloomington, Illinois. While the Lincoln and Douglas debates 
were going on. Fell was traveling in the East. He was surprised to 
find the people generally interested in Lincoln's arguments. He fre- 
quently was questioned about Lincoln's personality. On his return Fell 
talked to him about the advisability of putting out a sketch that would 
satisfy the curiosity which had been awakened by the speeches. Lin- 
coln refused to believe that Fell was right. It was not until December 
of 1859, a year after the suggestion was made, that he consented to 
write the little sketch of his life here printed. 

37 19 Since Lincoln's death the effort to identify his family with 
the New England family of the same name has resulted in something 
more definite than the similarity of Christian names of which he speaks. 
A series of researches in official documents extending over fifty years 
has established beyond doubt that Abraham Lincoln was a direct de- 
scendant of Samuel Lincoln, who came to New England in 1637. The 
fullest and most authoritative account of his pedigree is to be found in 
the " Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln " by Lea and Hutchinson. 

SLAVERY AS THE FATHERS VIEWED IT (Page 39) 

Cooper Union had been open but a few months when Lincoln spoke 
there. He had one of the most notable audiences which have ever gath- 
ered in New York. This was due largely to the impression his debates 
with Douglas had made. Many of his friends feared that he would not be 
able to hold the audience, but his success was pronounced. The speech 
was one of the most important and convincing Lincoln ever made. 

53 9 A little over four months before the Cooper Union meeting, on 
October 16, 1859, John Brown and a small group of followers had seized 



NOTES 121 

the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They hoped to arm a band of 
negroes and incite insurrection. The raid was unsuccessful. Brown was 
captured on October i8, tried by the commonwealth of Virginia, and was 
executed on December 2, 1859. 

55 19 Pari passu : proportionately. 

71 25-31 As originally written this address closed with the words, 
" You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government," 
etc. On* reaching Washington in February before his inauguration, 
Lincoln gave William H. Seward, Secretary of State, a copy of the ad- 
dress. Mr. Seward objected to his closing words and suggested the 
following paragraph : 

I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow countrymen 
and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they 
must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceed- 
ing from so many battlefields and so many patriotic graves, pass through all the 
hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in 
their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation. 

Mr. Lincoln rewrote the above suggestion of Mr. Seward, making of 
it the now famous paragraph here printed. The changes made, fur- 
nish an admirable study of the way in which Lincoln handled English. 1 



LINCOLN'S REPLY TO SECRETARY SEWARD'S OFFER TO 
BECOME THE HEAD OF THE ADMINISTRATION (Page 72) 

Mr. Seward undoubtedly believed sincerely that Abraham Lincoln 
was unfit for the presidency, and that one of his secretaries would be 
obliged to assume the leadership. When he accepted the appointment 
of Secretary of State, it was with the idea that he would be obliged to 
assume the responsibilities of the administration, and all his early work 
was done under this conviction. On April i, 1861, he sent Lincoln 
" Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." Mr, Lincoln's 
reply shows the astonishing suggestions in these " thoughts," though 
it is so courteously worded that it does not fully reveal their nature. 
Mr. Lincoln never showed to any one but his private secretaries Seward's 
communication and his reply. It is only fair to say that when Mr. 
Seward finally realized Lincoln's ability, he was quick to acknowledge it. 

1 The reader interested in the First Inaugural of Lincoln should not fail to 
read the admirable chapter on the subject in Vol. Ill of Nicolay and Hay's 
"Abraham Lincoln: a History," where Mr, Seward's criticisms are given 
in full. 



122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS RECOMMENDING COMPEN- 
SATED EMANCIPATION (Page 75) 

In connection with this message on compensated emancipation the 
reader's attention is called to the chapter on Lincoln and Emancipa- 
tion in the second volume of Tarbell's " Life of Abraham Lincoln." 

LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY (Page 77) 
The demand for the immediate emancipation of the negroes was 
strong in the North by the summer of 1862. The radicals brought heavy 
pressure to bear when Mr. Lincoln did not seem to sympathize with their 
program. On August 20 Horace Greeley printed in the New York Trib- 
une a signed editorial entitled, " The Prayer of 20,000,000," to which 
the letter here reprinted is a reply. As a matter of fact the President had 
in his desk at that time the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. 
81 6 Mr. Lincoln's calculations of the population which this country 
ought to have by 1900 have proved to be far wide of the mark. He 
calculated that in 1900 we ought to have a population of 103,208,415, 
and as a matter of fact we had but 76,303,387, — 374,485 less than he 
estimated we would have in 1890. The population of 1910 he fixed at 
138,918,526. The recent census shows that we have about 92,000,000. 

90 11 General Burnside had been given the command of the Army 
of the Potomac on November 10, 1862. He succeeded General Mc- 
Clellan. On December 13, 1862, Burnside fought the battle of Fred- 
ericksburg and was defeated. On January 25, 1863, Lincoln ordered 
General Hooker to relieve Burnside. The next day the President wrote 
Hooker the letter here printed. Noah Brooks heard General Hooker 
read the letter soon after its receipt, and as he folded it up say, " That 
is just such a letter as a father might write to his son." 

LETTER STATING HIS POSITION IN REGARD TO THE 
WAR AND TO EMANCIPATION (Page 93) 
In August, 1863, James C. Conkhng of Illinois, a leading Republican, 
wrote Mr. Lincoln, requesting him to come to the state to speak at a 
mass meeting to be held in Springfield in favor of " law and order and 
constitutional government." Mr. Lincoln could not leave Washington, 
but he wrote a letter which he himself said was " rather a good letter," 
and which Nicolay and Hay, in their account of it, call his " last stump 
speech." The extract, on the following page, from their " Abraham 
Lincoln : A History " shows what reception was given it.^ 

1 Vol. VII, p. 385. 



NOTES 123 

Nothing he ever uttered had a more instantaneous success. Mr. .Sumner 
immediately wrote to him: "Thanks for your true and noble letter. It is a 
historical document. The case is admirably stated, so that all but the wicked 
must confess its force. It cannot be answered." Henry Wilson wrote to him: 
" God Almighty bless you for your noble, patriotic, and Christian letter. It will 
be on the lips and in the hearts of hundreds of .thousands this day." Among the 
letters which the President most appreciated was one from the venerable Josiah 
Quincy, then ninety-one years of age, who wrote: "Old age has its privileges, 
which this letter will not exceed ; but I cannot refrain from expressing to you 
my gratitude for your letter to the Illinois Convention, — happy, timely, conclu- 
sive, and effective. What you say concerning emancipation, and your course of 
proceeding in relation to it, was due to truth and to your own character, shame- 
fully assailed as it has been. The development is an imperishable monument of 
wisdom and virtue." After discussing the question of emancipation, he continued : 
" I write under the impression that the victory of the United States in this war 
is inevitable — compromise is impossible. Peace on any other basis would be the 
establishment of two nations, each hating the other, both military, both neces- 
sarily warlike, their territories interlocked with a tendency of never-ceasing 
hostility. Can we leave to posterity a more cruel inheritance, or one more hope- 
less of happiness and prosperity ? " Mr. Lincoln answered this letter in a tone 
expressive of his reverence for the age and illustrious character of the. writer. 

PROCLAMATION FOR THANKSGIVING, 1863 (Page 97) 

This proclamation is the first making of Thanksgiving Day a national 
holiday. Up to this date it had been observed according to the discre- 
tion of the governors of different states. In 1846 Sarah Josepha Hale, 
the editor of Godey's Ladys Book and the author of " Mary had a Little 
Lamb," first suggested that the day be made national. Regularly after 
that, every fall, she sent out to the governors of all the states an appeal 
that they choose the last Thursday of November for the celebration. 
Finally, in 1S63, for the first time, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a national 
Thanksgiving Day. The custom thus inaugurated has been followed 
ever since. 

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (Page 99) 

The version of the Gettysburg speech here given is that made by- 
Mr. Lincoln at the request of the Honorable George Bancroft for the 
benefit of the Soldiers and Sailors' Fair held in Baltimore in 1864. 
Any one interested in studying the history of the Gettysburg speech 
will find full material with copies of the four different versions in a 
pamphlet called " The Gettysburg Address," written by Major William 
H. Lambert and printed by J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia. 

105 16 The election of Governor Plahn was of great importance, it 
being the first attempt at reconstruction in a Southern state from which 



124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Confederate forces had been driven. The election was conducted by 
the miUtary commander, General Banks ; three tickets were in the 
field and i i,ooo votes were cast. General Banks said, in his official report 
to Mr. Lincoln, that the ordinary vote of the state had been 40,000, 
and that the proportion of the vote cast at this election was nearly 
equal to the proportion covered by the federal army. Governor Hahn 
was inaugurated on March 4, without any interference from the military 
authorities. The convention of which Mr. Lincoln speaks in the letter 
here printed began early in April and continued until July 25. In the 
constitution adopted slavery was abolished, means for educating colored 
children were provided, the negro was placed on equal footing before 
the law with the white man, and the power to grant him suffrage was 
conferred upon the legislature. 

107 5 The difficulty with the question of emancipation, which Mr. 
Lincoln had at the beginning of his first administration, is well illus- 
trated by General Fremont's attempt in August, 1861, to free the slaves 
in his department. An excellent account of this attempt will be found 
in Vol. IV of Nicolay and Hay's "Abraham Lincoln : A History." 

109 5 Mr. Lincoln first met General Grant in March, 1864; this 
was after Grant had captured Vicksburg and carried on successfully 
the campaign in East Tennessee. Congress had revived for Grant's 
benefit the rank of lieutenant general, and on February 29 Lincoln ap- 
pointed him. to that rank. The President now asked Grant to take 
charge of the campaign against Lee. The general immediately reor- 
ganized the Army of the Potomac. By the end of April he was ready 
to open an active campaign. 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES 
(Page 115) 

The news of Lee's surrender to General Grant on Sunday, April 9, 
1865, caused great rejoicing through the country. On Monday evening 
a large crowd gathered about the White House in Washington to con- 
gratulate Mr. Lincoln and to ask for a speech. Pie told them that if 
they would come back the next evening he would be ready to say 
something to them, but that he wanted to be particular what he said 
was right, for everything got into print and he wanted to be careful 
not to make mistakes. The next evening, Tuesday, April 11, an im- 
mense crowd gathered, and it was then that the remarks here quoted 
were made. 



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